There are a lot of horror fans who maintain that the 2000s have been a desperately lousy decade for horror movies, that all we've been offered are derivative sequels and remakes. I'm of the opinion that this "popular opinion" reflects only the most visible, mainstream releases, and that if a true horror fan can't find recent horror films to suit their particular taste... they're just not looking hard enough. To round out a long series of blogs about horror movies that aren't included in my documentary (Nightmares in Red White and Blue), here's a list of some of my favorite horror films of the current decade.
2000
SCREAM 3 and URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT sounded like death throes for the horror genre, but this was also the year of THE GIFT, FINAL DESTINATION and BATTLE ROYALE. Last year around this time, blogger Jim Blanton made a case for 2000's BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2. Axelle Carolyn, in her book on "horror movies of the new millennium", hails THE CONVENT (featuring Adrienne Barbeau as a zombie hunting nun), as well as the Japanese zombie movies VERSUS and WILD ZERO. Personally, I think a case could even be made for HELLRAISER: INFERNO... but that's another post for another day. My own pick for 2000: GINGER SNAPS.
2001
A decent year for monster movies (see BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF and JEEPERS CREEPERS) and a particularly good year for ghost stories. In the summer of 2001, I attended the annual FrightFest in London, England, and was blown away by two of the films I saw there - THE BUNKER (a Lewton-esque British film set on the front lines of WWII) and Guillermo del Toro's THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE. Also noteworthy: Alejandro Amenabar's THE OTHERS, J.T. Petty's SOFT FOR DIGGING, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's KAIRO, and my personal favorite: Brad Anderson's SESSION 9.
2002
This year witnessed the popularization of J-horror with the American remake of THE RING, soon to be followed by English-language remakes of the Hideo Nakata's DARK WATER and the Pang Brothers film THE EYE. Neill Marshall made a noteworthy debut with DOG SOLDIERS. Lucky McKee made an even stronger debut with MAY. Danny Boyle practically reinvented the zombie movie with 28 DAYS LATER. And Eli Roth achieved wunderkind status with CABIN FEVER. (Sure, the film was tonally schizophrenic... but I won't believe anyone who says that Cerina Vincent's leg-shaving scene didn't make a strong impression. Roth knows his audience.) I'm tempted to draw attention to the surprisingly effective THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, as well as the admirable (if often underwhelming) ghost story BELOW, written by Darren Aaronofsky... and I can't, in good conscience, overlook Don Coscarelli's hilarious BUBBA-HO-TOP... but my favorite horror film of the year has to be the Canadian indie MY LITTLE EYE.
2003
This was the year that Platinum Dunes took the horror genre for ransom, by resurrecting Leatherface (and pitting him against Jessica Biel). Also the year of the "70s-style horror movie" comeback, thanks to similar films like Rob Schmidt's WRONG TURN and Rob Zombie's HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES. There were a few subtler efforts - IDENTITY and DEAD END come to mind - but the trend was definitely toward overkill. Alexandre Aja's HIGH TENSION turned plenty of heads, but I prefer Stuart Gordon's KING OF THE ANTS.
2004
Horror reached the apex of its popularity for the decade, thanks to a surprisingly spirited remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD, the brilliant parody SHAUN OF THE DEAD, and James Wan's enormously successful SAW. J-horror was still going strong, with the releases of MAREBITO, INFECTION, and Takashi Shimizu's American remake of THE GRUDGE. For my money, the year's best was the Korean ghost story SHUTTER.
2005
Remakes, sequels and "masters of horror" abounded... but it wasn't all bad. Among the first season episodes of MOH, I particularly liked DANCE OF THE DEAD (Tobe Hooper), JENIFER (Dario Argento), CIGARETTE BURNS (John Carpenter) and HOMECOMING (Joe Dante). WOLF CREEK, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS and HOSTEL gave rise to the catch-phrase "torture porn," but in my memory these films were eclipsed by Neill Marshall's more traditional monster movie THE DESCENT - which gets my vote for best horror film of the entire decade.
2006
Filmmakers delivered the unexpected even in familiar packages with the remake of THE HILLS HAVE EYES and PULSE, and a host of distinctive monster movies: SLITHER, SILENT HILL, THE LAST WINTER, and THE HOST. BUG wasn't a monster movie... and it didn't live up to all the hype that surrounded it as "William Friedkin's first horror film since THE EXORCIST"... but it's still much better than either Paul Schrader or Renny Harlin's earlier attempts at THE EXORCIST 4. The "8 Films to Die For" campaign valiantly brought attention to some independent horror films, though the only one I cared for was THE ABANDONED. As for the best films of the year... I'd have to go with THEM, HARD CANDY, and RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR.
2007
On one hand, you could lament this as the year of Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN remake. On the other hand, you could hail it as the year of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN... which I think worked for many of the same reasons that the original HALLOWEEN worked. Yes, there were a lot of other unnecessary sequels and remakes, but there was also 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, THE ORPHANAGE, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, THEM, [REC], FRONTIERS, INSIDE (easily the most disturbing horror film I've seen in recent memory), and a pair of sadly neglected indies that warmed the cockles of my movie-geek heart: THE SIGNAL and TEETH.
2008
This was the year that I made my documentary and at the time I wished I could have added CLOVERFIELD. Not necessarily because it was the best horror film of the year, but because it was the most talked-about. Two years later, I'd much rather sit down and re-watch THE RUINS, SPLINTER, EDEN LAKE, THE STRANGERS, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN or even M. Night Shyamalan's hopelessly-panned THE HAPPENING (if only because it reminded me of my fondness for the original DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS). The best film of the year, however, has to be the Swedish vampire film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.
2009
I must admit that I have some catching up to do... I haven't seen a lot of horror films in the last two years. I saw ZOMBIELAND and DRAG ME TO HELL, which got all the press in 2009. I was equally impressed with GRACE, CARRIERS and - despite all of the vitriolic reviews - JENNIFER'S BODY. Honestly, that's the most fun I've had watching a horror movie in a long time. The popularity of the genre may be waning slightly at the moment, but in my mind it's a never-ending cycle... and I'm fully prepared to celebrate Halloween on any night of the year.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Showing posts with label Halloween Countdown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween Countdown. Show all posts
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: The 1990s
In the weeks between the DVD release of NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE and All Hallow's Eve, I thought I’d take time to highlight some great horror films that aren’t included in my documentary. In 96 minutes, NIRWAB references approximately 250 films… but, of course, this barely scratches the surface of “classic horror.” With that in mind, I’m picking ten additional films to highlight for each decade between the 1930s and the 1980s...
1) BRAIN DEAD (1990)
2) FLATLINERS (1991)
3) JACOB'S LADDER (1991)
4) THE ADDICTION (1995)
5) IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1995)
6) LOST HIGHWAY (1997)
7) CUBE (1997)
8) RINGU (1998)
9) AUDITION (1999)
10) STIR OF ECHOES (1999)
1) BRAIN DEAD (1990)
2) FLATLINERS (1991)
3) JACOB'S LADDER (1991)
4) THE ADDICTION (1995)
5) IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1995)
6) LOST HIGHWAY (1997)
7) CUBE (1997)
8) RINGU (1998)
9) AUDITION (1999)
10) STIR OF ECHOES (1999)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: The 1980s
In the weeks between the DVD release of NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE and All Hallow's Eve, I thought I’d take time to highlight some great horror films that aren’t included in my documentary. In 96 minutes, NIRWAB references approximately 250 films… but, of course, this barely scratches the surface of “classic horror.” With that in mind, I’m picking ten additional films to highlight for each decade between the 1930s and the 1980s...
1) AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981)
You could easily argue that this is one of the biggest oversights in the documentary. I had a rationale for excluding it: I decided to focus instead of THE HOWLING (1981), the other big werewolf movie of 1981, because I had on-camera interviews with both Joe Dante (director of THE HOWLING) and Mick Garris (who did behind-the-scenes promotional videos for AVCO Embassy, which distributed THE HOWLING.) All the same, I feel a little guilty because AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is truly one of the great modern horror movies.
2) CUJO (1983)
I didn't realize what an impression this movie had made on me until I was working on the pilot episode of "A Haunting," and I unconsciously stole a scare sequences right out of the opening scene. At least when I steal, I steal from the best... Lewis Teague studied the art of suspense under Verna Fields, the editor of JAWS. CUJO earns extra points for being one of the very best Stephen King adaptations.
3) THE FLY (1986)
Proof that not all remakes are dreck, THE FLY is David Cronenberg at his best... and the horror genre at its most mature. This one made me physically ill the first time I first saw it, because the gross-out moments (and, boy, are they gross) are preceded by such an engaging human drama that you feel like you're undergoing a hellish transformation along with the characters.
4) THE HITCHER (1986)
This one is particularly effective because it's not difficult at all to imagine that it could really happen. Eric Red's script is terrifying in its simplicity; Rutger Hauer's nuanced performance places him in the top tier of movie psychopaths. The desolation of the Great American Desert plays a big part in the nightmare too.
5) THE STEPFATHER (1987)
This one wasn't on DVD when we were editing NIRWAB, which is the main reason that it didn't make the cut for the documentary... but I wrote about it at length in my book. I couldn't have imagined a better topic for my chapter on the postmodern American horror film (titled "Selling the American Dream"). Thankfully, the film is now available on DVD. Long live Terry O'Quinn!
6) HELLRAISER (1987)
I've been taken to task numerous times for not including HELLRAISER in my documentary on American horror films. Well, folks, it's not because I have no love for Pinhead, but because HELLRAISER is a British film. Actually, I love HELLRAISER. It's a horror story of Shakespearean proportions with some of the most compelling visuals ever committed to celluloid. I'm almost as enthusiastic about HELLRAISER II, which boasts one of the finest horror movie scores ever produced (by Christopher Young).
7) CHILD'S PLAY (1988)
I've also been taken to task for leaving Chucky out of the documentary... and that's a fair complaint. CHILD'S PLAY is extremely well-crafted by horror veteran Tom Holland, who also deserves honorable mention for his work on PSYCHO 2 (1983) and FRIGHT NIGHT (1985). All these years and so many sequels later, it's easy to forget how genuinely scary the original film was. This was one of the first horror movies that I was "allowed" to see, so most of Brad Dourif's lines are permanently burned into my brain. I have a feeling that the film probably also made a big impression on NIRWAB director/editor Andrew Monument, since he has a deep-seated fear of dolls...
8) SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW (1988)
The hell with Freddy... this is Wes Craven's best film. There, I said it. Honestly, if it weren't for the tacked-on ending, I'd consider this a perfect horror film -- one that completely immerses itself in another world, with its own internal logic and its own distinct nightmares.
9) PET SEMATARY (1989)
There are two images in this film that scared me more than anything I'd ever seen when I was 12 years old. If you've seen the movie, I probably don't have to tell you what they are. Despite a couple of wooden performances, I heart this movie... right down to the Ramones song on the end credits.
10) BRAIN DAMAGE (1989)
This is sort of a strange movie to end on... but I have to include it because a) I just watched FIEND WITHOUT A FACE for the first time, b) I feel guilty for leaving Frank Henenlotter out of the documentary (and I much prefer BRAIN DAMAGE to his better-known 1982 film BASKET CASE), c) This was my introduction to Zacherly, the Cool Ghoul (who voices Aylmer), and d) I will never forget the night that I watched this movie for the first time... on a drug-induced triple bill with David Lynch's mind-bending TWIN PEAKS pilot and Gregg Arraki's spirit-crushing feature THE DOOM GENERATION. Talk about brain damage.
1) AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981)
You could easily argue that this is one of the biggest oversights in the documentary. I had a rationale for excluding it: I decided to focus instead of THE HOWLING (1981), the other big werewolf movie of 1981, because I had on-camera interviews with both Joe Dante (director of THE HOWLING) and Mick Garris (who did behind-the-scenes promotional videos for AVCO Embassy, which distributed THE HOWLING.) All the same, I feel a little guilty because AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is truly one of the great modern horror movies.
2) CUJO (1983)
I didn't realize what an impression this movie had made on me until I was working on the pilot episode of "A Haunting," and I unconsciously stole a scare sequences right out of the opening scene. At least when I steal, I steal from the best... Lewis Teague studied the art of suspense under Verna Fields, the editor of JAWS. CUJO earns extra points for being one of the very best Stephen King adaptations.
3) THE FLY (1986)
Proof that not all remakes are dreck, THE FLY is David Cronenberg at his best... and the horror genre at its most mature. This one made me physically ill the first time I first saw it, because the gross-out moments (and, boy, are they gross) are preceded by such an engaging human drama that you feel like you're undergoing a hellish transformation along with the characters.
4) THE HITCHER (1986)
This one is particularly effective because it's not difficult at all to imagine that it could really happen. Eric Red's script is terrifying in its simplicity; Rutger Hauer's nuanced performance places him in the top tier of movie psychopaths. The desolation of the Great American Desert plays a big part in the nightmare too.
5) THE STEPFATHER (1987)
This one wasn't on DVD when we were editing NIRWAB, which is the main reason that it didn't make the cut for the documentary... but I wrote about it at length in my book. I couldn't have imagined a better topic for my chapter on the postmodern American horror film (titled "Selling the American Dream"). Thankfully, the film is now available on DVD. Long live Terry O'Quinn!
6) HELLRAISER (1987)
I've been taken to task numerous times for not including HELLRAISER in my documentary on American horror films. Well, folks, it's not because I have no love for Pinhead, but because HELLRAISER is a British film. Actually, I love HELLRAISER. It's a horror story of Shakespearean proportions with some of the most compelling visuals ever committed to celluloid. I'm almost as enthusiastic about HELLRAISER II, which boasts one of the finest horror movie scores ever produced (by Christopher Young).
7) CHILD'S PLAY (1988)
I've also been taken to task for leaving Chucky out of the documentary... and that's a fair complaint. CHILD'S PLAY is extremely well-crafted by horror veteran Tom Holland, who also deserves honorable mention for his work on PSYCHO 2 (1983) and FRIGHT NIGHT (1985). All these years and so many sequels later, it's easy to forget how genuinely scary the original film was. This was one of the first horror movies that I was "allowed" to see, so most of Brad Dourif's lines are permanently burned into my brain. I have a feeling that the film probably also made a big impression on NIRWAB director/editor Andrew Monument, since he has a deep-seated fear of dolls...
8) SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW (1988)
The hell with Freddy... this is Wes Craven's best film. There, I said it. Honestly, if it weren't for the tacked-on ending, I'd consider this a perfect horror film -- one that completely immerses itself in another world, with its own internal logic and its own distinct nightmares.
9) PET SEMATARY (1989)
There are two images in this film that scared me more than anything I'd ever seen when I was 12 years old. If you've seen the movie, I probably don't have to tell you what they are. Despite a couple of wooden performances, I heart this movie... right down to the Ramones song on the end credits.
10) BRAIN DAMAGE (1989)
This is sort of a strange movie to end on... but I have to include it because a) I just watched FIEND WITHOUT A FACE for the first time, b) I feel guilty for leaving Frank Henenlotter out of the documentary (and I much prefer BRAIN DAMAGE to his better-known 1982 film BASKET CASE), c) This was my introduction to Zacherly, the Cool Ghoul (who voices Aylmer), and d) I will never forget the night that I watched this movie for the first time... on a drug-induced triple bill with David Lynch's mind-bending TWIN PEAKS pilot and Gregg Arraki's spirit-crushing feature THE DOOM GENERATION. Talk about brain damage.
Friday, October 08, 2010
HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: The 1970s
In the weeks between the DVD release of NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE and All Hallow's Eve, I thought I’d take time to highlight some great horror films that aren’t included in my documentary. In 96 minutes, NIRWAB references approximately 250 films… but, of course, this barely scratches the surface of “classic horror.” With that in mind, I’ve given myself a task for the next few weeks. For each decade between the 1930s and the 2000s, I’m going pick ten additional films to highlight...
1) Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
When I wrote the first draft of my book Nightmares in Red White and Blue, this underrated gem was the film title I mentioned. The film was directed by a guy named John Hancock. You can't get much more patriotic than that...
2)Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972)
Zombie knights on horseback... Nuff said.
3) Sisters (1973)
Brian DePalma proves that he's a worthy heir to Alfred Hitchcock...
4) Don't Look Now (1973)
I had heard about this legendary ghost story for years before I finally managed to see the film (on a Region 2 DVD while I was staying with friends in London)... and it more than lived up to the hype.
5) The Wicker Man (1973)
Utterly captivating for every single minute leading up an utterly unforgettable finale. Need I mention Britt Ekland's dance moves?
6) Deliverance (1974)
This film was originally in the NIRWAB documentary as a representative of the "savage cinema" of the 1970s. It remains one of the most harrowing films I've ever seen.
7) Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Most people wouldn't consider this a horror movie, but few "horror" films get under my skin like this one. It's a simple, reality-based narrative... but Peter Weir's visual storytelling somehow stirs up the great mysteries of the universe. (The director's followup, THE LAST WAVE, is equally noteworthy.)
8) God Told Me To (a.k.a. Demon, 1977)
For my money, Larry Cohen's best film... and I was happy to tell him so when I interviewed him for NIRWAB. We quickly got into a discussion about the film and the bad rap that it got upon initial release. Cohen told me:
People thought that God Told Me To was kind of touchy because it dealt with religion... but I always say, "Hey, look at The Exorcist! Here’s a movie where the little girl’s masturbating with a crucifix. I mean, this is really disgusting stuff." And they had real priests on the set of that movie as technical advisors. What the hell were they doing there, lending credence to this movie... just because it was a bestselling book? They got away with a lot. Far more than we did with God Told Me To... The marketing of God Told Me To was particularly bad. They tried to make it out to be a film that was condemned by the leaders of every religion. They put out ads like that: "This film has been condemned by the leaders of every religious group." What kind of way is that to sell a movie? And then they opened it in Texas, of all places. The stupidity of that organization [Roger Corman's New World] was mind-boggling.
9) Suspiria (1977)
Streaming directly from Dario Argento's vivid nightmares into the soft tissue of your brain...
10) Martin (1978)
George Romero is of course known for zombie movies, but he also made one of the best vampire films in the last half-century. Some fans consider this his best film... and Romero agrees. When I interviewed him for NIRWAB, he told me:
Martin remains my favorite film of mine... It's hard to explain why... You like your own work not so much because of the work... but [because of] the experience that goes into it – the people you work with, the time you spend making it, the camaraderie, the collaboration and all of that. That's what I love about that film. I also think the film’s pretty good, but that… all of that goes into my judgment of it. And it’s the film that came closest to what I intended to do. Everyone supported me and worked hard to make it, and so that’s why it’s my favorite film.
The idea originally came from... I wanted to do a comedy. I said, if there was a real vampire [alive today], he’d have to get a new driver’s license every few years... because he's not gonna look any older. Originally I wanted to do something like that. And I started to scribble a few ideas for a vampire comedy and then I said, "No, that’s not the way to go." One day, I say, "I’m going to try to do this straight."
[It's about] a kid that’s been influenced by family and film and you don’t know which is the strongest influence. And he thinks he’s a vampire. And he is in fact... I mean, he actually enjoys the taste of blood. He always got the impression that it would relate somehow to [intimacy].... He's not the most truthful guy in the world, but he's the sweetest guy that you’d ever want to know. Never tells a lie. Goes on the radio and says who he is... I loved all those ironies that ran through it. I loved the "monster within" theme. So that’s where that movie came from.
1) Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
When I wrote the first draft of my book Nightmares in Red White and Blue, this underrated gem was the film title I mentioned. The film was directed by a guy named John Hancock. You can't get much more patriotic than that...
2)Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972)
Zombie knights on horseback... Nuff said.
3) Sisters (1973)
Brian DePalma proves that he's a worthy heir to Alfred Hitchcock...
4) Don't Look Now (1973)
I had heard about this legendary ghost story for years before I finally managed to see the film (on a Region 2 DVD while I was staying with friends in London)... and it more than lived up to the hype.
5) The Wicker Man (1973)
Utterly captivating for every single minute leading up an utterly unforgettable finale. Need I mention Britt Ekland's dance moves?
6) Deliverance (1974)
This film was originally in the NIRWAB documentary as a representative of the "savage cinema" of the 1970s. It remains one of the most harrowing films I've ever seen.
7) Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Most people wouldn't consider this a horror movie, but few "horror" films get under my skin like this one. It's a simple, reality-based narrative... but Peter Weir's visual storytelling somehow stirs up the great mysteries of the universe. (The director's followup, THE LAST WAVE, is equally noteworthy.)
8) God Told Me To (a.k.a. Demon, 1977)
For my money, Larry Cohen's best film... and I was happy to tell him so when I interviewed him for NIRWAB. We quickly got into a discussion about the film and the bad rap that it got upon initial release. Cohen told me:
People thought that God Told Me To was kind of touchy because it dealt with religion... but I always say, "Hey, look at The Exorcist! Here’s a movie where the little girl’s masturbating with a crucifix. I mean, this is really disgusting stuff." And they had real priests on the set of that movie as technical advisors. What the hell were they doing there, lending credence to this movie... just because it was a bestselling book? They got away with a lot. Far more than we did with God Told Me To... The marketing of God Told Me To was particularly bad. They tried to make it out to be a film that was condemned by the leaders of every religion. They put out ads like that: "This film has been condemned by the leaders of every religious group." What kind of way is that to sell a movie? And then they opened it in Texas, of all places. The stupidity of that organization [Roger Corman's New World] was mind-boggling.
9) Suspiria (1977)
Streaming directly from Dario Argento's vivid nightmares into the soft tissue of your brain...
10) Martin (1978)
George Romero is of course known for zombie movies, but he also made one of the best vampire films in the last half-century. Some fans consider this his best film... and Romero agrees. When I interviewed him for NIRWAB, he told me:
Martin remains my favorite film of mine... It's hard to explain why... You like your own work not so much because of the work... but [because of] the experience that goes into it – the people you work with, the time you spend making it, the camaraderie, the collaboration and all of that. That's what I love about that film. I also think the film’s pretty good, but that… all of that goes into my judgment of it. And it’s the film that came closest to what I intended to do. Everyone supported me and worked hard to make it, and so that’s why it’s my favorite film.
The idea originally came from... I wanted to do a comedy. I said, if there was a real vampire [alive today], he’d have to get a new driver’s license every few years... because he's not gonna look any older. Originally I wanted to do something like that. And I started to scribble a few ideas for a vampire comedy and then I said, "No, that’s not the way to go." One day, I say, "I’m going to try to do this straight."
[It's about] a kid that’s been influenced by family and film and you don’t know which is the strongest influence. And he thinks he’s a vampire. And he is in fact... I mean, he actually enjoys the taste of blood. He always got the impression that it would relate somehow to [intimacy].... He's not the most truthful guy in the world, but he's the sweetest guy that you’d ever want to know. Never tells a lie. Goes on the radio and says who he is... I loved all those ironies that ran through it. I loved the "monster within" theme. So that’s where that movie came from.
Saturday, October 02, 2010
HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: The 1960s
In the weeks between the DVD release of NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE and All Hallow's Eve, I thought I’d take time to highlight some great horror films that aren’t included in my documentary. In 96 minutes, NIRWAB references approximately 250 films… but, of course, this barely scratches the surface of “classic horror.” With that in mind, I’ve given myself a task for the next few weeks. For each decade between the 1930s and the 2000s, I’m going pick ten additional films to highlight...
1) Horror Hotel (1960)
2) Peeping Tom (1960)
3) The Innocents (1961)
4) The Haunting (1963)
5) Wait Until Dark (1963)
6) Lady in a Cage (1964)
Darren Lynn Bousman on Lady in a Cage: "There is a movie I’ve seen over and over again... I show it to people when they first meet me, because it’s something I want everyone to see. It's a movie called Lady in a Cage. It’s an old film, James Caan’s first movie, and it’s about a lady who gets trapped in an elevator between the third floor and first floor in her house. And this group of hooligans break into her house and they just hold her there and torture her there for days. There’s no blood, no violence - but it’s a horrific movie. And it’s one of those movies that stayed with me long after I first saw it."
7) Kwaidan (1964)
8) Repulsion (1965)
9) The Devil Rides Out (a.k.a. The Devil's Bride, 1967)
10) Witchfinder General (a.k.a. The Conqueror Worm, 1968)
I only watched 1 new movie this week, but it was a hell of a good one... certainly worthy of this list:
1) Horror Hotel (1960)
2) Peeping Tom (1960)
3) The Innocents (1961)
4) The Haunting (1963)
5) Wait Until Dark (1963)
6) Lady in a Cage (1964)
Darren Lynn Bousman on Lady in a Cage: "There is a movie I’ve seen over and over again... I show it to people when they first meet me, because it’s something I want everyone to see. It's a movie called Lady in a Cage. It’s an old film, James Caan’s first movie, and it’s about a lady who gets trapped in an elevator between the third floor and first floor in her house. And this group of hooligans break into her house and they just hold her there and torture her there for days. There’s no blood, no violence - but it’s a horrific movie. And it’s one of those movies that stayed with me long after I first saw it."
7) Kwaidan (1964)
8) Repulsion (1965)
9) The Devil Rides Out (a.k.a. The Devil's Bride, 1967)
10) Witchfinder General (a.k.a. The Conqueror Worm, 1968)
I only watched 1 new movie this week, but it was a hell of a good one... certainly worthy of this list:
Sunday, September 26, 2010
HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: The 1950s
With the DVD release of NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE looming, I thought I’d spend the next few weeks highlighting some great horror films that aren’t included in my documentary. In 96 minutes, NIRWAB references approximately 250 films… but, of course, this barely scratches the surface of “classic horror.” With that in mind, I’ve given myself a task for the weeks leading up to Halloween. For each decade between the 1930s and the 2000s, I’m going pick ten additional films to highlight. And since there are plenty of great horror films that I haven’t even seen yet, I’m also going to review a pair of films from each decade that are completely new to me.
It’s difficult to talk about horror movies of the 1950s without talking about the “British invasion” of the genre (to say nothing of the overwhelming influence of the French film DIABOLIQUE, which set the stage for the return of psychological horror in the 1960s). For that reason, I’m dividing this week’s crop between American horror and British horror (mostly Hammer).
The Hammer studio made its first fright-fest in 1955, when they adapted Nigel Kneale’s 1953 BBC miniseries THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, about a man who returns from space with an alien “infection.” I remember seeing the film for the first time on an AMC Halloween marathon. Although the plot is quite predictable, I was extremely impressed by the creepy presence of Richard Wordsworth (as the infected space traveler). His performance alone puts this film on par with some of the better episodes of “The Twilight Zone” or “The Outer Limits.” The film did so well at the British box office that it was released in America under the title THE CREEPING UNKNOWN, and Hammer practically reinvented itself overnight – putting all of its energy into sci-fi / horror films.
Until this week, I’d never seen Hammer’s second sci-fi / horror film X: THE UNKNOWN (1956), in which a group of thick-skulled military types discover a bottomless pit that emits high levels of radiation… and, eventually, a radioactive "mud monster." The film has been referred to occasionally as the British version of THE BLOB (1958), but I think that’s selling it short. X: THE UNKNOWN has many of the hallmarks of the great American sci-fi / horror films of the fifties: an alien invasion scare (reminiscent of THE BLOB), atomic anxiety (reminiscent of THEM!, 1954) and a struggle between the conservative military and the more liberal minds of science (reminiscent of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, 1951). Admittedly the film is a bit too talky overall, but there are definitely some satisfyingly gooey visuals… An extreme dose of radiation causes one character to literally melt onscreen! Unlike America’s Blob, England’s Mud Monster doesn’t even have to touch you to kill you. That just goes to show how refined the Brits are.
Hammer followed up with the even better QUATERMASS 2 (a.k.a. ENEMY FROM SPACE, 1957), which does everything that INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS does – only, Anglo-philes will argue, better. Then the studio really hit pay-dirt with the more traditional Gothic horror film THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957), which made a genre icon of Peter Cushing and forecast the next two decades of Hammer fare. It was followed up by the even more sinister REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1958) and by DRACULA (a.k.a. HORROR OF DRACULA, 1960), which made a star of Christopher Lee. In all of the excitement over Victorian monsters, Professor Quatermass kind of got lost. Hammer didn’t bring him back until 1966, when they belatedly adapted the 1958-59 BBC miniseries QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (a.k.a. FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH).
I watched the original miniseries this week, and I have to say that it was a troubling experience. On one hand, the story is absolutely brilliant. On the other hand, the production was utterly boring. QUATERMASS AND THE PIT has got to be the highest of high-concept sci-fi / horror movies. It has all of the great genre movie tropes: witchcraft, black magic, goblins, demons, the devil, ghosts, poltergeist, possession, psychics, telekinesis, the missing link, space ships, alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. Even more amazing: writer Nigel Kneale combines all of these things into a story that is more than the sum of its parts. QUATERMASS AND THE PIT actually has something significant to say about mankind’s past and future. As a result, the film has had an overwhelming influence on stories as different as Stephen King’s THE TOMMYKNOCKERS (the author admits he unconsciously plagiarized QUATERMASS while writing his novel in a coke-induced frenzy), John Carpenter’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS (Carpenter has said that QUATERMASS AND THE PIT is an all-time favorites) and Danny Boyle’s 28 DAYS LATER. No self-respecting sci-fi / horror fan should be unaware of this one… although it might be best to stick with the Hammer adaptation.
Since I mentioned John Carpenter, I should also point out another of his British favorites from the 1950s: THE TROLLENBERG TERROR (a.k.a. THE CREEPING EYE, 1958). The story is nothing unique – scientific experiments with radiation lure telepathic aliens to a laboratory in the Swiss mountains – but there are several images in the film’s final siege that will stay with you forever.
I can say the same thing about MGM’s FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958), which I just saw for the first time. I rented this one because Criterion has distributed the film on DVD, and the Criterion label is always a high recommendation. At first, this atomic monster movie seemed like just a cheap crackerjack version of THE TINGLER (1959)… In fact, for the first two-thirds of the picture, I was kind of amazed that the filmmakers had produced a monster that was even cheaper than William Castle’s tingler: namely, an invisible tingler. The film relies purely on sounds effects to convey the nastiness of an invisible “mental vampire” that sucks the brains and spinal cords out of its victims.
Then, after a lot of ridiculous scientific “explanation,” the film takes a dramatic turn into surrealism. Honestly – the third act is like a bad acid trip. The radiation-fueled “mental vampires” finally become visible and start attacking everyone in sight. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen these brain-sucking snails slurping up and down tree trunks in the middle of the night. In response, our heroes stab them, shoot them and even axe them… with some very messy results. On the DVD bonus features, film historian Tom Weaver reveals that FIEND WITHOUT A FACE originally played on a double bill with the Boris Karloff film THE HAUNTED STRANGER. I’ve never seen THE HAUNTED STRANGER, but I pity Karloff for having to compete with this madness… Nothing that Frankenstein’s Monster could do would possibly would be as gnarly as the last twenty minutes of FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. In fact, the only thing that comes close is Frank Henenlotter’s gleeful homage BRAIN DAMAGE (1988).
I can't overlook HOUSE OF WAX (1953), since it’s the film that turned Vincent Price into a horror icon. (Price had certainly played dark and tragic roles before - in TOWER OF LONDON, THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS, THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES, LAURA and DRAGONWYCK - but this was his commercial breakthrough as a leading man. Subsequent appearances in THE FLY and HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL sealed the deal.) HOUSE OF WAX was also the first 3-D horror movie... but we shouldn’t hold that against the film.
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955) with Robert Mitchum is probably the most genuinely unsettling psychological horror films of the decade. It set the stage for PSYCHO and CAPE FEAR a few years later… to say nothing of Hollywood’s other creepiest preacher, Reverend Kane in POLTERGEIST 2.
Last but not least, there’s Albert Band’s I BURY THE LIVING (1958), about a cemetery attendant who inherits a kind of voodoo power related to an old map of the graveyard. When he sticks a black pin into a reserved plot on the cemetery map, the future "guest" of that plot dies instantly. The film serves as yet another reminder that the most effective sci-fi / horror stories don’t need special effects half as much as they need interesting concepts. It all begins with two words: “What if…?”
It’s difficult to talk about horror movies of the 1950s without talking about the “British invasion” of the genre (to say nothing of the overwhelming influence of the French film DIABOLIQUE, which set the stage for the return of psychological horror in the 1960s). For that reason, I’m dividing this week’s crop between American horror and British horror (mostly Hammer).
The Hammer studio made its first fright-fest in 1955, when they adapted Nigel Kneale’s 1953 BBC miniseries THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, about a man who returns from space with an alien “infection.” I remember seeing the film for the first time on an AMC Halloween marathon. Although the plot is quite predictable, I was extremely impressed by the creepy presence of Richard Wordsworth (as the infected space traveler). His performance alone puts this film on par with some of the better episodes of “The Twilight Zone” or “The Outer Limits.” The film did so well at the British box office that it was released in America under the title THE CREEPING UNKNOWN, and Hammer practically reinvented itself overnight – putting all of its energy into sci-fi / horror films.
Until this week, I’d never seen Hammer’s second sci-fi / horror film X: THE UNKNOWN (1956), in which a group of thick-skulled military types discover a bottomless pit that emits high levels of radiation… and, eventually, a radioactive "mud monster." The film has been referred to occasionally as the British version of THE BLOB (1958), but I think that’s selling it short. X: THE UNKNOWN has many of the hallmarks of the great American sci-fi / horror films of the fifties: an alien invasion scare (reminiscent of THE BLOB), atomic anxiety (reminiscent of THEM!, 1954) and a struggle between the conservative military and the more liberal minds of science (reminiscent of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, 1951). Admittedly the film is a bit too talky overall, but there are definitely some satisfyingly gooey visuals… An extreme dose of radiation causes one character to literally melt onscreen! Unlike America’s Blob, England’s Mud Monster doesn’t even have to touch you to kill you. That just goes to show how refined the Brits are.
Hammer followed up with the even better QUATERMASS 2 (a.k.a. ENEMY FROM SPACE, 1957), which does everything that INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS does – only, Anglo-philes will argue, better. Then the studio really hit pay-dirt with the more traditional Gothic horror film THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957), which made a genre icon of Peter Cushing and forecast the next two decades of Hammer fare. It was followed up by the even more sinister REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1958) and by DRACULA (a.k.a. HORROR OF DRACULA, 1960), which made a star of Christopher Lee. In all of the excitement over Victorian monsters, Professor Quatermass kind of got lost. Hammer didn’t bring him back until 1966, when they belatedly adapted the 1958-59 BBC miniseries QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (a.k.a. FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH).
I watched the original miniseries this week, and I have to say that it was a troubling experience. On one hand, the story is absolutely brilliant. On the other hand, the production was utterly boring. QUATERMASS AND THE PIT has got to be the highest of high-concept sci-fi / horror movies. It has all of the great genre movie tropes: witchcraft, black magic, goblins, demons, the devil, ghosts, poltergeist, possession, psychics, telekinesis, the missing link, space ships, alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. Even more amazing: writer Nigel Kneale combines all of these things into a story that is more than the sum of its parts. QUATERMASS AND THE PIT actually has something significant to say about mankind’s past and future. As a result, the film has had an overwhelming influence on stories as different as Stephen King’s THE TOMMYKNOCKERS (the author admits he unconsciously plagiarized QUATERMASS while writing his novel in a coke-induced frenzy), John Carpenter’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS (Carpenter has said that QUATERMASS AND THE PIT is an all-time favorites) and Danny Boyle’s 28 DAYS LATER. No self-respecting sci-fi / horror fan should be unaware of this one… although it might be best to stick with the Hammer adaptation.
Since I mentioned John Carpenter, I should also point out another of his British favorites from the 1950s: THE TROLLENBERG TERROR (a.k.a. THE CREEPING EYE, 1958). The story is nothing unique – scientific experiments with radiation lure telepathic aliens to a laboratory in the Swiss mountains – but there are several images in the film’s final siege that will stay with you forever.
I can say the same thing about MGM’s FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958), which I just saw for the first time. I rented this one because Criterion has distributed the film on DVD, and the Criterion label is always a high recommendation. At first, this atomic monster movie seemed like just a cheap crackerjack version of THE TINGLER (1959)… In fact, for the first two-thirds of the picture, I was kind of amazed that the filmmakers had produced a monster that was even cheaper than William Castle’s tingler: namely, an invisible tingler. The film relies purely on sounds effects to convey the nastiness of an invisible “mental vampire” that sucks the brains and spinal cords out of its victims.
Then, after a lot of ridiculous scientific “explanation,” the film takes a dramatic turn into surrealism. Honestly – the third act is like a bad acid trip. The radiation-fueled “mental vampires” finally become visible and start attacking everyone in sight. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen these brain-sucking snails slurping up and down tree trunks in the middle of the night. In response, our heroes stab them, shoot them and even axe them… with some very messy results. On the DVD bonus features, film historian Tom Weaver reveals that FIEND WITHOUT A FACE originally played on a double bill with the Boris Karloff film THE HAUNTED STRANGER. I’ve never seen THE HAUNTED STRANGER, but I pity Karloff for having to compete with this madness… Nothing that Frankenstein’s Monster could do would possibly would be as gnarly as the last twenty minutes of FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. In fact, the only thing that comes close is Frank Henenlotter’s gleeful homage BRAIN DAMAGE (1988).
I can't overlook HOUSE OF WAX (1953), since it’s the film that turned Vincent Price into a horror icon. (Price had certainly played dark and tragic roles before - in TOWER OF LONDON, THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS, THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES, LAURA and DRAGONWYCK - but this was his commercial breakthrough as a leading man. Subsequent appearances in THE FLY and HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL sealed the deal.) HOUSE OF WAX was also the first 3-D horror movie... but we shouldn’t hold that against the film.
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955) with Robert Mitchum is probably the most genuinely unsettling psychological horror films of the decade. It set the stage for PSYCHO and CAPE FEAR a few years later… to say nothing of Hollywood’s other creepiest preacher, Reverend Kane in POLTERGEIST 2.
Last but not least, there’s Albert Band’s I BURY THE LIVING (1958), about a cemetery attendant who inherits a kind of voodoo power related to an old map of the graveyard. When he sticks a black pin into a reserved plot on the cemetery map, the future "guest" of that plot dies instantly. The film serves as yet another reminder that the most effective sci-fi / horror stories don’t need special effects half as much as they need interesting concepts. It all begins with two words: “What if…?”
Thursday, September 23, 2010
HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: The 1940s
With the DVD release of NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE looming (next Tuesday!), I thought I’d spend the next few weeks highlighting some great horror films that aren’t included in my documentary. In 96 minutes, NIRWAB references approximately 250 films… but, of course, this barely scratches the surface of “classic horror.” With that in mind, I’ve given myself a task for the weeks leading up to Halloween. For each decade between the 1930s and the 2000s, I’m going to pick ten additional films to highlight. And since there are plenty of great horror films that I haven’t even seen yet, I’m also going to review a pair of films from each decade that are completely new to me…
For me, the 1940s are all about Val Lewton. The nine horror films that he produced for RKO between 1942 and 1946 are, in my mind, the bridge between monster movies and more “adult” horror. They may not have received very much recognition at the time of their original release, but future generations have discovered them on home video (I remember sitting in a darkened room in the basement of the my college library, watching them one by one on laserdisc), and many viewers share the opinion that these films represent the horror genre at its most ambitious. Here’s the list:
CAT PEOPLE (1942, director: Jacques Tourneur)
I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943, Tourneur) – arguably Lewton’s best
THE LEOPARD MAN (1943, Tourneur)
THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943, directed by Mark Robson)
THE GHOST SHIP (1943, Robson) – the weakest of the bunch
THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944, directed by Robert Wise)
THE BODY SNATCHER (1945, Wise)
ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945, Robson)
BEDLAM (1946, Robson)
Die-hards like me also want to include Jacques Tourneur’s NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957) and Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING (1963) in the list, even though Lewton's influence was entirely spiritual.
Not everyone wants to give Lewton so much credit. When I interviewed John Carpenter for NIRWAB, he confessed that he is emphatically not a Val Lewton fan. At one point, he said, he was scheduled to be a talking head in Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Lewton – and his plan was to offer a counter-argument against the producer’s stylized approach to monster movies. He told me:
“There’s a scene in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, where Kirk Douglass and Barry Sullivan are these Hollywood filmmakers, and they’re looking at these cat people outfits… and [the outfits] are so bad. So they say, ‘Well, we’ll do it the old fashioned way with shadows and such.’ But when you’re a kid, you don’t want to see shadows. You want to see the real thing, man! Don’t piss me off by not showing me [the monster]… If you’re going to show a cat person, make it a good one… The most famous movie monster of all time probably was Frankenstein – and, man, they showed him. And he became iconic. You couldn’t keep him in the shadows. It would be a cheat.”
That’s not to suggest that Carpenter doesn’t still appreciate the aesthetic of Lewton’s film. He loves film noir – a visual style that had pervaded all of Hollywood by the late 1940s, and transformed horror movies into introverted, psychological dramas… with only a slight hint of the supernatural. Alfred Hitchcock’s elegant Gothic romance REBECCA (1941) keeps the ghosts in the heads of the characters, while Paramount’s THE UNINVITED (1944) seems embarrassed to admit that the ghosts are real. Old-fashioned horror movies like Universal’s SON OF DRACULA (1943) also took to psychoanalyzing their characters. In the film, the main female victim longs for eternal life just as intensely as Dracula himself longs for death. Her psychologist (a stock character in horror films of the day) explains, “The girl was morbid. That often means a fear of death, and Alucard could give her eternal life.” Of course, Lewton’s THE SEVENTH VICTIM made this point much more eloquently… foreshadowing dramas like THE SNAKE PIT (1948), in which the immensely sympathetic Olivia de Havilland suffers a nervous breakdown and shock treatment. Perhaps no film of the 1940s combined pop psychology and monstrous horror better than MGM’s memorably twisted THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1945). In this case, however, I’d have to agree with John Carpenter that too much can be left to the imagination.
Whether one chooses to cite Val Lewton’s films as a major influence on mainstream horror or not, the genre unquestionably digested the style of film noir (as practically every American genre did). Some viewers are particularly taken with the horror-noirs of director John Brahm, who remade Hitchcock’s THE LODGER in 1944. Personally, I think THE LODGER is painfully melodramatic. I have a much stronger appreciation for following year’s HANGOVER SQUARE, which stars Laird Cregar (an A-list version of Lon Chaney Jr. who played Jack the Ripper in THE LODGER) as a workaholic composer who is so repressed that he can commit murder without remembering it. Only DORIAN GRAY’s pop psychologist George Sanders knows the truth: When Cregar gets torn between two women (a blond-haired “good girl” and a raven-haired “bad girl”), things get messy. The plot is a little too close to Victor Fleming’s slick remake of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1941) – and, frankly, I’d rather watch the earlier film, since it boasts Lana Turner and Ingrid Bergman as the dueling dates – but there are a couple of highly memorable set pieces in HANGOVER SQUARE… one that takes place during a Guy Fawkes festival and one that takes place during a piano concerto – with music by Bernard Herrmann. (Eat your heart out, Alfred Hitchcock.)
Another unsung film noir that drew my attention this week was Delmer Daves’s THE RED HOUSE (1947), which stars Edward G. Robinson as a peg-legged old man with a guilty secret. When his adopted daughter and her new beau start snooping around a mysterious shack in the woods, all of his repressed memories start coming back… and suddenly ol’ Ed isn’t as kind and gentle as he was before. THE RED HOUSE isn’t a horror movie… It’s a much more traditional Gothic romance, where the major conflicts exist solely in the minds of the characters. Nevertheless, there are shades of later films like BLUE VELVET (1986) and LADY IN WHITE (1988), and some great moody sequences that take place in the woods at night, with the moon casting long shadows and wind howling through the trees. THE RED HOUSE also features a young Rory Calhoun (who horror fans will remember as the demented farmer in MOTEL HELL) lurking in the darkness, pretending he's Robert Mitchum.
More than anything, THE RED HOUSE made me want to see another film that’s I remember being just as effective at creating that kind of atmosphere. I first saw Disney’s THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (1949) when I was seven or eight years old, and the five-minute sequence at the end where Ichabod Crane is chased through the hollow by the Headless Horseman made a huge impression. In NIRWAB, Joe Dante cited Disney’s PINOCCHIO (1940) as an example of childhood fare that separates the horror fans from the non-horror fans. SLEEPY HOLLOW (viewed, as I recall, back to back with POLTERGEIST on a day when I came home sick from school) was certainly one of the films that made a horror fan out of me.
And while we’re talking about cartoons, I have to mention one more kid-friendly favorite from the 1940s: “HAIR-RAISING HARE” (1946) is a Merrie Melodies short that pits Bugs Bunny against a big orange monster and a droopy-eyed mad scientist who looks and sounds just like Peter Lorre's mad pianist in THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS, which was released the same year. (Eat your heart out, Laird Cregar.)
For me, the 1940s are all about Val Lewton. The nine horror films that he produced for RKO between 1942 and 1946 are, in my mind, the bridge between monster movies and more “adult” horror. They may not have received very much recognition at the time of their original release, but future generations have discovered them on home video (I remember sitting in a darkened room in the basement of the my college library, watching them one by one on laserdisc), and many viewers share the opinion that these films represent the horror genre at its most ambitious. Here’s the list:
CAT PEOPLE (1942, director: Jacques Tourneur)
I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943, Tourneur) – arguably Lewton’s best
THE LEOPARD MAN (1943, Tourneur)
THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943, directed by Mark Robson)
THE GHOST SHIP (1943, Robson) – the weakest of the bunch
THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944, directed by Robert Wise)
THE BODY SNATCHER (1945, Wise)
ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945, Robson)
BEDLAM (1946, Robson)
Die-hards like me also want to include Jacques Tourneur’s NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957) and Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING (1963) in the list, even though Lewton's influence was entirely spiritual.
Not everyone wants to give Lewton so much credit. When I interviewed John Carpenter for NIRWAB, he confessed that he is emphatically not a Val Lewton fan. At one point, he said, he was scheduled to be a talking head in Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Lewton – and his plan was to offer a counter-argument against the producer’s stylized approach to monster movies. He told me:
“There’s a scene in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, where Kirk Douglass and Barry Sullivan are these Hollywood filmmakers, and they’re looking at these cat people outfits… and [the outfits] are so bad. So they say, ‘Well, we’ll do it the old fashioned way with shadows and such.’ But when you’re a kid, you don’t want to see shadows. You want to see the real thing, man! Don’t piss me off by not showing me [the monster]… If you’re going to show a cat person, make it a good one… The most famous movie monster of all time probably was Frankenstein – and, man, they showed him. And he became iconic. You couldn’t keep him in the shadows. It would be a cheat.”
That’s not to suggest that Carpenter doesn’t still appreciate the aesthetic of Lewton’s film. He loves film noir – a visual style that had pervaded all of Hollywood by the late 1940s, and transformed horror movies into introverted, psychological dramas… with only a slight hint of the supernatural. Alfred Hitchcock’s elegant Gothic romance REBECCA (1941) keeps the ghosts in the heads of the characters, while Paramount’s THE UNINVITED (1944) seems embarrassed to admit that the ghosts are real. Old-fashioned horror movies like Universal’s SON OF DRACULA (1943) also took to psychoanalyzing their characters. In the film, the main female victim longs for eternal life just as intensely as Dracula himself longs for death. Her psychologist (a stock character in horror films of the day) explains, “The girl was morbid. That often means a fear of death, and Alucard could give her eternal life.” Of course, Lewton’s THE SEVENTH VICTIM made this point much more eloquently… foreshadowing dramas like THE SNAKE PIT (1948), in which the immensely sympathetic Olivia de Havilland suffers a nervous breakdown and shock treatment. Perhaps no film of the 1940s combined pop psychology and monstrous horror better than MGM’s memorably twisted THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1945). In this case, however, I’d have to agree with John Carpenter that too much can be left to the imagination.
Whether one chooses to cite Val Lewton’s films as a major influence on mainstream horror or not, the genre unquestionably digested the style of film noir (as practically every American genre did). Some viewers are particularly taken with the horror-noirs of director John Brahm, who remade Hitchcock’s THE LODGER in 1944. Personally, I think THE LODGER is painfully melodramatic. I have a much stronger appreciation for following year’s HANGOVER SQUARE, which stars Laird Cregar (an A-list version of Lon Chaney Jr. who played Jack the Ripper in THE LODGER) as a workaholic composer who is so repressed that he can commit murder without remembering it. Only DORIAN GRAY’s pop psychologist George Sanders knows the truth: When Cregar gets torn between two women (a blond-haired “good girl” and a raven-haired “bad girl”), things get messy. The plot is a little too close to Victor Fleming’s slick remake of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1941) – and, frankly, I’d rather watch the earlier film, since it boasts Lana Turner and Ingrid Bergman as the dueling dates – but there are a couple of highly memorable set pieces in HANGOVER SQUARE… one that takes place during a Guy Fawkes festival and one that takes place during a piano concerto – with music by Bernard Herrmann. (Eat your heart out, Alfred Hitchcock.)
Another unsung film noir that drew my attention this week was Delmer Daves’s THE RED HOUSE (1947), which stars Edward G. Robinson as a peg-legged old man with a guilty secret. When his adopted daughter and her new beau start snooping around a mysterious shack in the woods, all of his repressed memories start coming back… and suddenly ol’ Ed isn’t as kind and gentle as he was before. THE RED HOUSE isn’t a horror movie… It’s a much more traditional Gothic romance, where the major conflicts exist solely in the minds of the characters. Nevertheless, there are shades of later films like BLUE VELVET (1986) and LADY IN WHITE (1988), and some great moody sequences that take place in the woods at night, with the moon casting long shadows and wind howling through the trees. THE RED HOUSE also features a young Rory Calhoun (who horror fans will remember as the demented farmer in MOTEL HELL) lurking in the darkness, pretending he's Robert Mitchum.
More than anything, THE RED HOUSE made me want to see another film that’s I remember being just as effective at creating that kind of atmosphere. I first saw Disney’s THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (1949) when I was seven or eight years old, and the five-minute sequence at the end where Ichabod Crane is chased through the hollow by the Headless Horseman made a huge impression. In NIRWAB, Joe Dante cited Disney’s PINOCCHIO (1940) as an example of childhood fare that separates the horror fans from the non-horror fans. SLEEPY HOLLOW (viewed, as I recall, back to back with POLTERGEIST on a day when I came home sick from school) was certainly one of the films that made a horror fan out of me.
And while we’re talking about cartoons, I have to mention one more kid-friendly favorite from the 1940s: “HAIR-RAISING HARE” (1946) is a Merrie Melodies short that pits Bugs Bunny against a big orange monster and a droopy-eyed mad scientist who looks and sounds just like Peter Lorre's mad pianist in THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS, which was released the same year. (Eat your heart out, Laird Cregar.)
Monday, September 20, 2010
HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: The 1930s
With the DVD release of NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE looming, I thought I’d spend the next few weeks highlighting some great horror films that aren’t included in the documentary. In 96 minutes, NIRWAB references approximately 250 films… but, of course, this barely scratches the surface of “classic horror.” With that in mind, I’ve given myself a task for the weeks leading up to Halloween. For each decade between the 1930s and the 2000s, I’m going pick ten additional films to highlight. And since there are plenty of great horror films that I haven’t even seen yet, I’m also going to review a pair of films from each decade that are completely new to me. Let the Countdown to Halloween begin!
Universal's DRACULA (1931) made the commercial appeal of “morbid” supernatural fantasy immediately apparent, and the studio was eager to duplicate its success. MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932) makes an interesting study because it’s based on story elements that writer/director Robert Florey intended for Universal’s screen adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN. The film is also notable as actor Bela Lugosi’s follow-up to his star-making role in DRACULA… which came only after he turned down the role of Frankenstein’s Monster. RUE MORGUE has absolutely nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name, but – like most of the classic Universal monster movies – it does have mood to spare.
Lugosi fared even better in the same year’s WHITE ZOMBIE (1932), which capitalized on his exotic Dracula persona (there are an unholy number of prolonged closeups of Lugosi's eyes), while Boris Karloff rode Frankenstein’s coattails into the more prestigious THE MUMMY (1933), arguably the most beautiful of Universal’s monster movies. The opening scenes, set in Egypt, benefit greatly from the natural beauty of Red Rock Canyon in Kern County, California, and the rest of the film testifies to the natural talents of cinematographer Karl Freund. The only problem with THE MUMMY, as George A. Romero said to me during our interview for NIRWAB, is that “there’s no mummy in THE MUMMY!” In fact, you only see Karloff as the Mummy in the opening sequence. After that, he takes off the bandages and becomes Ardeth Bey – a lethargic variation on Lugosi’s Dracula. (Romero added: “It was Christopher Lee’s Mummy that really impressed me!”) For sheer atmosphere, the film that trumps all of Hollywood’s early monster movies is the German Expressionist film VAMPYR (1932), Carl Dreyer’s first sound film. It would be years before native American filmmakers learned how to capture the same dreamlike quality.
Arguably more innovative but certainly less atmospheric was a pair of films that director Michael Curtiz made for MGM. When I interviewed Larry Cohen, he raved about Curtiz’s work. Despite his enthusiasm for the director, however, he wasn’t particularly impressed with DR. X (1932) or MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933). At the time, these films had the distinct appeal of being presented in color (actually three-strip Technicolor) and being set in modern-day America. DR. X plays like a 1930s American screwball comedy with some scares tacked on: THE FRONT PAGE in a rubber mask. MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is a more compelling horror movie. In my opinion, it’s just as effective as its better-known remake HOUSE OF WAX (1953).
The most shamefully overlooked 1930s monster movie is Paramount’s ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932), a surprisingly gutsy adaptation of H.G. Wells’s “Island of Dr. Moreau.” It features a memorably sadistic performance by Charles Laughton (as the mad scientist who cross-breeds men and beasts) and a notable minor performance by Bela Lugosi, as one of Moreau’s man-beast creations who rebels against his creator. It’s a crime that this movie still isn’t available on DVD.
One of the best DVDs around for classic monster movie fans is disc three of MGM’s “Legends of Horror” Collection: a double feature of MAD LOVE (1935) and THE DEVIL DOLL (1936). MAD LOVE features Peter Lorre as an obsessive surgeon named Gogol. Bela Lugosi tried to top his eccentricities in the similarly-themed THE RAVEN (1935), but nobody plays crazy better than Peter Lorre. THE DEVIL DOLL is equally eccentric, but is perhaps more notable as director Tod Browning’s most sentimental film. Lionel Barrymore’s turn as an emotionally tortured scientist has all the pathos (though, admittedly, less of the perversity) of Browning’s early efforts with Lon Chaney.
SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939) is a capstone on the decade, reflecting a dramatic change in the genre: The extroverted horror film was no longer in vogue. SON OF FRANKENSTEIN is not nearly as morbid as its predecessors, and most of the thematic darkness is softened with humor. In fact, it would fit better on a double bill with Mel Brooks’s parody YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) than with James Whale’s films. This was Boris Karloff’s last turn as Frankenstein’s Monster (who, for some reason, has gone mute since BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN). Bela Lugosi plays another thankless role, as Ygor.
There are plenty of monster movies from this decade that I have yet to see. I admit that I’ve only watched about half of the Universal pictures that appeared in the “Shock” and “Son of Shock” TV packages in the 1950s. (About half of them aren’t available on DVD yet.) Several of the filmmakers that I interviewed for NIRWAB fondly remembered those films. Joe Dante said:
When I was a kid, I lived in the suburbs of New Jersey and there were no revival houses. Occasionally they would find a film like THE WIZARD OF OZ and run that on a matinee, but for the most part we were completely unaware of earlier pictures. That all changed when the Shock package was sold to TV. That was Universal movies from the 30s and 40s that had escaped our notice, because they were never available… The coming of the Shock package to television was a big deal because it was all over the country at the same time. And it coincided with the creation of Famous Monsters of Filmland, which was the publication that united a lot of kids who felt very alone in their obsession with these movies, and didn’t think there were other kids like them out there. When the magazine became available [we realized], “Hey there’s more kids like this. Like me.” It was the beginning of monster movie fandom. There had always been science fiction fandom, but it was very literary. But this was movie stuff. The one thing that Forry Ackerman did, I think, for a lot of people who grew up to go into the movie business was to sort of educate them to the fact that there was more than just going to the movies – more than just sitting there and going home. There were people out there who made these movies. There were people who starred in them. And there were trends and types and categories of films. It was really the beginning of critical thinking, I think, for a lot of kids.
Mick Garris remembers:
Channel 6 showed horror movies late at night, on a show called The Scary Show. And it was just a guy in a lousy rubber mask – not a memorable horror host at all – but he had the Universal package, so they would run the DRACULAs and the FRANKENSTEINs and THE WOLF MAN at 11:30 on Saturday night, and my mother would stay up and watch them with me. Most mothers at the time would discourage kids from reading comic books or watching monster movies, from drawing ghoulish things and the like… but my mother would say, “At least he’s reading, at least he’s drawing, at least he’s writing, at least he’s doing something creative,” and was very encouraging about it… She wasn’t a big horror fan but she would watch them and say, “You know, that was a good movie.” I remember after watching the 1931 DRACULA, she said, “That really holds up.” I don’t know that she’d say that today but back in the 60s she said, “That really holds up”… So I guess in part I have her to thank for my turn down the dark aisle.
Many of the “Shock” films that have been released on DVD over the past few years feature Boris Karloff. In 2006, Universal released the “Boris Karloff Collection” – which includes NIGHT KEY (1937) and THE MAD GHOUL (1943) – and the “Icons of Horror” collection, featuring THE BLACK ROOM (1935), THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG (1939), BEFORE I HANG (1940) and THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU (1942). The “Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive” box set, released in 2009, includes THE BLACK CAT (1934), MAN MADE MONSTER (1941), HORROR ISLAND (1941), NIGHT MONSTER (1942) and CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943).
This Halloween, I decided to watch two non-Universal Karloff movies from the same time period, THE GHOUL (1933) and THE DEVIL COMMANDS (1941). Both were good finds. THE GHOUL is also relatively new to DVD… It was believed to be a lost film until a near-perfect-quality negative was found at the British Film Institute in the 1980s. MGM finally released the title on DVD in 2003, and it’s a beautiful sight.
The film stars Karloff as an Egyptologist who returns from the dead to stalk greedy heirs in a spooky old mansion. The cinematography is beautiful, and the dialogue surprisingly witty. Unfortunately, Karloff doesn’t get much screen time. Neither does Ernest Thesiger (best known as the wily Dr. Pretorious in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN).
Obviously there are some missed opportunities, but it's still a great companion piece to THE MUMMY (1933) and THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1934)… or even George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1967). Romero’s original title for NOTLD was “Anubis,” named after the Egyptian God of the Dead, and his concept of the living dead was very different from how it came to be interpreted by viewers: “I didn’t use vampires,” he told me, “because [Richard Matheson] had done that [in his novel I Am Legend]. I didn’t call them zombies because zombies were those boys in the Caribbean doing Lugosi’s wet work [in WHITE ZOMBIE]… I called them ghouls.”
The concept of the “living dead” is quite different in Columbia’s THE DEVIL COMMANDS (1941), directed by Edward Dmytryk. THE DEVIL COMMANDS is a Lovecraftian story that casts Karloff in the role of an obsessive scientist studying brain waves. After his wife is killed in a car accident, he goes mad, enlists the help of a cold-hearted psychic and starts experimenting on corpses. His goal is to use them as physical mediums for communication with his wife’s disembodied spirit.
Parallels to FRANKENSTEIN are numerous – right down to the Victorian warnings about “things mankind wasn’t mean to know” and an inevitable confrontation with an angry mob of provincial conservatives. Although it lacks the frisson to be a true horror classic, THE DEVIL COMMANDS is nevertheless an impressively literate horror film. Personally, I can’t help thinking of it as a forerunner to Tom McLoughlin’s ONE DARK NIGHT (1981), which delves deep into the pseudo-science of biofeedback beyond the grave. My only complaint: Where the hell is the devil in THE DEVIL COMMANDS?
Happy haunting!
Universal's DRACULA (1931) made the commercial appeal of “morbid” supernatural fantasy immediately apparent, and the studio was eager to duplicate its success. MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932) makes an interesting study because it’s based on story elements that writer/director Robert Florey intended for Universal’s screen adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN. The film is also notable as actor Bela Lugosi’s follow-up to his star-making role in DRACULA… which came only after he turned down the role of Frankenstein’s Monster. RUE MORGUE has absolutely nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name, but – like most of the classic Universal monster movies – it does have mood to spare.
Lugosi fared even better in the same year’s WHITE ZOMBIE (1932), which capitalized on his exotic Dracula persona (there are an unholy number of prolonged closeups of Lugosi's eyes), while Boris Karloff rode Frankenstein’s coattails into the more prestigious THE MUMMY (1933), arguably the most beautiful of Universal’s monster movies. The opening scenes, set in Egypt, benefit greatly from the natural beauty of Red Rock Canyon in Kern County, California, and the rest of the film testifies to the natural talents of cinematographer Karl Freund. The only problem with THE MUMMY, as George A. Romero said to me during our interview for NIRWAB, is that “there’s no mummy in THE MUMMY!” In fact, you only see Karloff as the Mummy in the opening sequence. After that, he takes off the bandages and becomes Ardeth Bey – a lethargic variation on Lugosi’s Dracula. (Romero added: “It was Christopher Lee’s Mummy that really impressed me!”) For sheer atmosphere, the film that trumps all of Hollywood’s early monster movies is the German Expressionist film VAMPYR (1932), Carl Dreyer’s first sound film. It would be years before native American filmmakers learned how to capture the same dreamlike quality.
Arguably more innovative but certainly less atmospheric was a pair of films that director Michael Curtiz made for MGM. When I interviewed Larry Cohen, he raved about Curtiz’s work. Despite his enthusiasm for the director, however, he wasn’t particularly impressed with DR. X (1932) or MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933). At the time, these films had the distinct appeal of being presented in color (actually three-strip Technicolor) and being set in modern-day America. DR. X plays like a 1930s American screwball comedy with some scares tacked on: THE FRONT PAGE in a rubber mask. MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is a more compelling horror movie. In my opinion, it’s just as effective as its better-known remake HOUSE OF WAX (1953).
The most shamefully overlooked 1930s monster movie is Paramount’s ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932), a surprisingly gutsy adaptation of H.G. Wells’s “Island of Dr. Moreau.” It features a memorably sadistic performance by Charles Laughton (as the mad scientist who cross-breeds men and beasts) and a notable minor performance by Bela Lugosi, as one of Moreau’s man-beast creations who rebels against his creator. It’s a crime that this movie still isn’t available on DVD.
One of the best DVDs around for classic monster movie fans is disc three of MGM’s “Legends of Horror” Collection: a double feature of MAD LOVE (1935) and THE DEVIL DOLL (1936). MAD LOVE features Peter Lorre as an obsessive surgeon named Gogol. Bela Lugosi tried to top his eccentricities in the similarly-themed THE RAVEN (1935), but nobody plays crazy better than Peter Lorre. THE DEVIL DOLL is equally eccentric, but is perhaps more notable as director Tod Browning’s most sentimental film. Lionel Barrymore’s turn as an emotionally tortured scientist has all the pathos (though, admittedly, less of the perversity) of Browning’s early efforts with Lon Chaney.
SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939) is a capstone on the decade, reflecting a dramatic change in the genre: The extroverted horror film was no longer in vogue. SON OF FRANKENSTEIN is not nearly as morbid as its predecessors, and most of the thematic darkness is softened with humor. In fact, it would fit better on a double bill with Mel Brooks’s parody YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) than with James Whale’s films. This was Boris Karloff’s last turn as Frankenstein’s Monster (who, for some reason, has gone mute since BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN). Bela Lugosi plays another thankless role, as Ygor.
There are plenty of monster movies from this decade that I have yet to see. I admit that I’ve only watched about half of the Universal pictures that appeared in the “Shock” and “Son of Shock” TV packages in the 1950s. (About half of them aren’t available on DVD yet.) Several of the filmmakers that I interviewed for NIRWAB fondly remembered those films. Joe Dante said:
When I was a kid, I lived in the suburbs of New Jersey and there were no revival houses. Occasionally they would find a film like THE WIZARD OF OZ and run that on a matinee, but for the most part we were completely unaware of earlier pictures. That all changed when the Shock package was sold to TV. That was Universal movies from the 30s and 40s that had escaped our notice, because they were never available… The coming of the Shock package to television was a big deal because it was all over the country at the same time. And it coincided with the creation of Famous Monsters of Filmland, which was the publication that united a lot of kids who felt very alone in their obsession with these movies, and didn’t think there were other kids like them out there. When the magazine became available [we realized], “Hey there’s more kids like this. Like me.” It was the beginning of monster movie fandom. There had always been science fiction fandom, but it was very literary. But this was movie stuff. The one thing that Forry Ackerman did, I think, for a lot of people who grew up to go into the movie business was to sort of educate them to the fact that there was more than just going to the movies – more than just sitting there and going home. There were people out there who made these movies. There were people who starred in them. And there were trends and types and categories of films. It was really the beginning of critical thinking, I think, for a lot of kids.
Mick Garris remembers:
Channel 6 showed horror movies late at night, on a show called The Scary Show. And it was just a guy in a lousy rubber mask – not a memorable horror host at all – but he had the Universal package, so they would run the DRACULAs and the FRANKENSTEINs and THE WOLF MAN at 11:30 on Saturday night, and my mother would stay up and watch them with me. Most mothers at the time would discourage kids from reading comic books or watching monster movies, from drawing ghoulish things and the like… but my mother would say, “At least he’s reading, at least he’s drawing, at least he’s writing, at least he’s doing something creative,” and was very encouraging about it… She wasn’t a big horror fan but she would watch them and say, “You know, that was a good movie.” I remember after watching the 1931 DRACULA, she said, “That really holds up.” I don’t know that she’d say that today but back in the 60s she said, “That really holds up”… So I guess in part I have her to thank for my turn down the dark aisle.
Many of the “Shock” films that have been released on DVD over the past few years feature Boris Karloff. In 2006, Universal released the “Boris Karloff Collection” – which includes NIGHT KEY (1937) and THE MAD GHOUL (1943) – and the “Icons of Horror” collection, featuring THE BLACK ROOM (1935), THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG (1939), BEFORE I HANG (1940) and THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU (1942). The “Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive” box set, released in 2009, includes THE BLACK CAT (1934), MAN MADE MONSTER (1941), HORROR ISLAND (1941), NIGHT MONSTER (1942) and CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943).
This Halloween, I decided to watch two non-Universal Karloff movies from the same time period, THE GHOUL (1933) and THE DEVIL COMMANDS (1941). Both were good finds. THE GHOUL is also relatively new to DVD… It was believed to be a lost film until a near-perfect-quality negative was found at the British Film Institute in the 1980s. MGM finally released the title on DVD in 2003, and it’s a beautiful sight.
The film stars Karloff as an Egyptologist who returns from the dead to stalk greedy heirs in a spooky old mansion. The cinematography is beautiful, and the dialogue surprisingly witty. Unfortunately, Karloff doesn’t get much screen time. Neither does Ernest Thesiger (best known as the wily Dr. Pretorious in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN).
Obviously there are some missed opportunities, but it's still a great companion piece to THE MUMMY (1933) and THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1934)… or even George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1967). Romero’s original title for NOTLD was “Anubis,” named after the Egyptian God of the Dead, and his concept of the living dead was very different from how it came to be interpreted by viewers: “I didn’t use vampires,” he told me, “because [Richard Matheson] had done that [in his novel I Am Legend]. I didn’t call them zombies because zombies were those boys in the Caribbean doing Lugosi’s wet work [in WHITE ZOMBIE]… I called them ghouls.”
The concept of the “living dead” is quite different in Columbia’s THE DEVIL COMMANDS (1941), directed by Edward Dmytryk. THE DEVIL COMMANDS is a Lovecraftian story that casts Karloff in the role of an obsessive scientist studying brain waves. After his wife is killed in a car accident, he goes mad, enlists the help of a cold-hearted psychic and starts experimenting on corpses. His goal is to use them as physical mediums for communication with his wife’s disembodied spirit.
Parallels to FRANKENSTEIN are numerous – right down to the Victorian warnings about “things mankind wasn’t mean to know” and an inevitable confrontation with an angry mob of provincial conservatives. Although it lacks the frisson to be a true horror classic, THE DEVIL COMMANDS is nevertheless an impressively literate horror film. Personally, I can’t help thinking of it as a forerunner to Tom McLoughlin’s ONE DARK NIGHT (1981), which delves deep into the pseudo-science of biofeedback beyond the grave. My only complaint: Where the hell is the devil in THE DEVIL COMMANDS?
Happy haunting!
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