Introducing Movieline's Halloween 25: A Week of Must-See Fright Flicks For Every Taste
Looking for an alternative to watching Halloween and The Exorcist for the umpteenth time on cable this Halloween? Movieline has you covered. Starting today, we'll be offering a week-long series of unseen horror films in five terrifying sub-genres. Today's edition features vintage cults, sadists, evil masks and the most terrifying Ingmar Bergman film ever -- all made pre-1970, all in black-and-white.
(Needless to say, horror buffs are welcome and encouraged to chime in below with their own alternatives...)
· The Seventh Victim (1943)
Mark Robson's insane masterpiece of atmosphere, suspense and terror follows a woman who uncovers a Satanic cult in Greenwich Village while searching for her missing sister. Robson uses fog and shadows to create a sustained sense of dread, building to a shocking ending that still packs a wallop. One chase with two strange men on the subway might be among the scariest, most bizarre scenes ever filmed.
· Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Georges Franju's plastic-surgery horror film concerns a professor trying to perfect a technique to graft skin from one animal to another. You can probably guess where that goes. Besides its surprisingly graphic surgery scenes, macabre sense of humor, and eerie surrealist touches, Eyes Without a Face is memorable for its haunting, carnival-esque score, which will probably get stuck in your head after you view the trailer below. You've been warned.
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Comments
The Sadist? Talk about memories of walking through the aisles of Blockbuster looking for something, anything, to watch...and there's that box with Arch Hall Jr.'s face staring at you, looking like he was dropped as a baby in a mental institution. This has got to be good, right? Yeah, not so much.
Kudos on the inclusion of "The Seventh Victim". Nearly all of the Val Lewton-produced films driected by Mark Robson or Jacques Tourneur in the 40's have a terrifically moody/weird aesthetic.
I highly recommend setting the dvr for TCM's showing of "Martin Scorsese Presents Val Lewton - The Man in the Shadows" - it covers his entire career and gives a nice taste of his films. It airs Oct 30, 03:30AM-EST.
Eyes Without a Face is creepy and gives a great look at Paris in the 60's. For an even scarier Franju film, try "Le Sang des Betes," his documentary about a meat factory outside of Paris.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1534177851847179722#
Also, The Sadist rules.
If the category is "pre-1970, all in black-and-white" I'd nominate 1966's "Seconds". Is it super scary? No. (It plays more like a feature length "Twilight Zone" episode from the same period.) But it is an extremely unsettling as it pairs young director John Frankenheimer with an out-of-left-field performance by Rock Hudson, music by Jerry Goldsmith, and a title sequence by Saul Bass.
It's an odd duck of a movie, but well worth checking out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxRhqoJBhmU
Definitely, all of the Lewton + Tourneur/Robson movies are fantastic- Cat People was neck in neck with Seventh Victim for inclusion on the list. Finally, I decided Tourneur gets more love by film historians, so I gave a shout out to Robson.
Id suggest some of Lucio Fulci's horror collection.
They have an occultish feel to them and are ahead of their time with the gore.
Believe me, if I thought of four other good movies to include on a "Be Careful What You Wish For" list, Seconds would be at the top. It holds up so well - still very intense.
Still considering some of his stuff for one of the lists this week...stay tuned. One that I'm pretty sure I won't use, but is worth a mention is The New York Ripper - I really liked the fact that the killer talked in a duck voice.
After all, we've got to pay for that craft stash somehow!