The Silver Screen Oasis

Of the subtle, respectful chillers just mentioned, I must support the suggestions of ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, and THE UNINVITED. I like the Invisible Man films a lot. If you want to get a little sillier, try the high voltage screamers of William Castle. STRAIT-JACKET, NIGHT WALKER and others.

You know, Mr. Arkadin, you're absolutely right in your description of Night of the Hunter. Certainly it has frightening elements and haunting images (Shelley Winters' underwater corpse, for instance - that's eerie). But really it could best be defined as a dark fairy tale.

Love the movie. Only the ending seems a bit of a letdown. Wanted a bit more tension.

The original Cape Fear cannot truly be described as a horror film either. But I do think Scorsese's remake most definitely falls into that category. In fact, I recall one reviewer comparing DeNiro's Max Cady to Freddy Krueger.

Yes, the William Castle films. Silly but good fun. My faves are The Tingler and The House on Haunted Hill (which still has one of the best "jump" scenes in horror movies).

BTW way RedRiver, do you really consider Island of Lost Souls subtle? That film definitely has a wild ending, and gruesome to the max in what it suggests.

Another 30s film that is quite gruesome is the already recommended Murders in the Zoo. Has an opening that is unforgettable and terrifying. Wonder what audiences of the time thought of that unfortunate character running right into the camera.

SON OF DRACULA



Awwww man, this would be like shooting fish in a barrel. The thing is, I love films like this. The Siodmak brothers aimed high. I like how Alucard changed from bat to man. My Sammykins is in it. That’s Samuel S. Hinds to the rest of the world. Besides, if Lois Lane couldn’t figure out that Clark Kent w/o his glasses is Superman, how can you expect these little 1940’s townspeople to figure out that A-L-U-C-A-R-D spelled backwards is...is...

Island of Lost Souls subtle?

I might have chosen a better word. I meant subtle as opposed to exploding zombies and flesh eating aliens. Mature, literate horror.

. . . And certainly much more entertaining (and frightening) than those two execrable remakes. The Brando version was really a mess. And wearing that ice bucket on his head. What the . . . ?

I love it in Island of Lost Souls when Captain Davies asks at the dinner table if the natives eat any "long pig."

Sorry, that should be "Captain Donahue."

I watched Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell Trilogy, and all three movies are equally fascinating as they are frustrating. All three, more-or-less, deal with the prospect of one (or more) of the Gates of Hell opening, with the first, City of the Living Dead locating that door in New England's Dunwich (as in Lovecraft?) Essentially it's a zombie film, but way wackier. Plot threads that seem essential are simply abandoned, which doesn't help the main plot, which also generally makes little sense.

However, Fulci does create a wonderfully sinister overall atmosphere in the film, and, of course, there are a number of his signature gross-out set-pieces, some working better than others. (Interestingly, the scariest scene doesn't contain any gross elements, but is rather the digging up of someone who had been accidentally buried alive. Or maybe she came back to life somehow; that's one of the things that is never explained, but thankfully she wasn't embalmed.)

The Beyond was on TCM awhile back, and is quite a bit of fun as a zombie film until the end, which adds considerable depth to some of what seemed like nonsense. Okay, some of it is still nonsense, and there are plot holes, as well as a hero who can't seem to understand that he must shoot the zombie in the head, not twice in the torso (his gun has an endless supply of ammo). The Fulci atmosphere is even more pronounced in this film, and the gross-out quotient is here, too, so be warned.

The House By the Cemetery should be better than it is. It has everything: a creepy house with a creepy basement; a young boy who sees and plays with an "imaginary" friend; a sinister Nanny; and, as the title implies, its a house by a cemetery! The plot builds well early on, but then Fulci frustratingly drops many of the more interesting threads, which then draws you out of the film because you're busy saying "huh?" (Coherency is not one of Fulci's strong suits. At least in the Gates of Hell series.)
While the most frustrating of the three, House is also the best because that dreaded atmosphere Fulci creates is menacingly relentless. It also has some of the best camera work (although the cinematography on all three is superb). And yea, the gore is here, too.

Speaking of the gore, as a film maker, Fulci often undermines the effectiveness of the sequences by lingering on them too long. The length of some actually make them comical, and worse, when he pushes in for the extreme close-up, he often reaveals how the effects are done because you can see the various tubes and latex, etc. (at least you can on blu-ray).

Fulci is a mixed bag and I usually end up loving or hating his movies--there is no middle ground. Still, I find a lot of his work interesting because he takes chances with his plots, often using the genre film (whether giallo, horror, westerns, or splatter) to make observations about society as a whole. As you noted, House by the Cemetery is probably his best (but least known) horror/gore type film. Like another reviewer once said, it works because it feeds on familiar childhood fears, but it also has unexpected twists that most will never see coming.

Here's a link to Rev. Phantom's Fulcigasm site where he reviews several of the classics:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... -A&cad=rja

Not mentioned, but worth seeing are the 1966 western Massacre Time and the White Fang films, White Fang (1973) The Return of White Fang (1974) all featuring Franco Nero.

Well, one of the movies that my rental company does carry is The Seventh Victim which I saw today. I just loved this tale of an occult that had murdered before, I'm a big fan of Kim Hunter and she was superb as the younger sister who's completely niave and out of her depth and searching for her sister. The symbolism, the locked room with the hangman's rope, the woman walking around outside the door. The sinister pyschiatrist played by Tom Conway, why did I assume he was the baddie, was it the accent. Jean Brooks as Jacqueline had an other world quality about her. The amount of people trying to find Jacqueline did add to the mystery and no one, even the good guys seemed to be completely truthful. It kept me on my toes and guessing until the end. It's running time 71 minutes but so much packed into it, I very much enjoyed it.

I love all of the Lewton's, but The Seventh Victim is the one I return to most often. (It may be tied with The Body Snatcher.)

I love The Bodysnatcher more I think because of Boris and Bela, The Seventh Victim was a satisfying film nonetheless.

If I had to pick my all-time favorite classic horror film, it would definitely be "The Body Snatcher". Another I really like from some years later is "The Flesh and the Fiends" with my dear friend Peter Cushing as Dr. Knox. The latter is a more straightforward telling of the Burke and Hare story, and Donald Pleasance and George Rose are standouts as the ghoulish pair.

Just got a disturbing thought: What is it about graverobbing films that fascinate me?

"The Flesh and the Fiends" is a very good film, isn't it? Cushing, as Dr. Knox, gets to be cold and witty but he also gets to crack and show remorse at the end, something that his Dr. Frankenstein was never allowed. And Donald Pleasance gives a terrifying and manic performance as one of the resurrection men. (It struck me as very different from the rest of Pleasance's work that I've seen. Far more physical.)

"Corridors of Blood" is an interesting body snatcher film, perhaps more of a historical film than a horror film. Boris Karloff plays a doctor trying to discover anesthetic and Christopher Lee is one of the body snatchers who ruins his life. I think this British film was made in 1958 or so and not released in the US until 1962.

Finally, there is "Deliveries in the Rear," a superlative episode of "Night Gallery" with Cornell Wilde as an arrogant professor of anatomy who deals with body snatchers. This one is very cunningly constructed, one of Serling's best achievements I think.

charliechaplinfan wrote:Well, one of the movies that my rental company does carry is The Seventh Victim which I saw today. I just loved this tale of an occult that had murdered before, I'm a big fan of Kim Hunter and she was superb as the younger sister who's completely niave and out of her depth and searching for her sister. The symbolism, the locked room with the hangman's rope, the woman walking around outside the door. The sinister pyschiatrist played by Tom Conway, why did I assume he was the baddie, was it the accent. Jean Brooks as Jacqueline had an other world quality about her. The amount of people trying to find Jacqueline did add to the mystery and no one, even the good guys seemed to be completely truthful. It kept me on my toes and guessing until the end. It's running time 71 minutes but so much packed into it, I very much enjoyed it.

The Seventh Victim is definitely the bleakest of the Lewton series, possibly followed by Isle of the Dead (1946). Both films deal with the realization of mortality and its inevitability. You should also check out I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Leopard Man (1943), The Ghost Ship (1943) and Bedlam (1946).

. . . And there is "The Doctor and The Devils" with Timothy Dalton as Dr. Rock and Jonathan Pryce giving a standout performance as one of the resurrection men. Also the Hammer film "Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde" throws Burke and Hare into the story, truly mixing fiction with fact.