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.
· The Sadist (1963)
This tense, low-budget film about a group of teachers held hostage by a sadistic couple takes no prisoners, revealing early on that likable characters will not necessarily be spared. Arch Hall Jr.'s relentless, completely psychotic performance only adds to the sense than anything can and will happen. Just watch the first minute below and try not to finish it. The film also features great, early work by cinematography great Vilmos Zsigmond, who, 15 years later, earned an Oscar for shooting Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
· Onibaba (1964)
Probably the scariest adaptation of a Buddhist parable ever filmed. A woman puts on a mask taken from a slain samurai in order to scare her daughter-in-law. It works (Ha!) ... but then it won't come off. Cue screaming, violence, anguish and lots of rain. This classic's influence is still felt today, most recently evidenced in the trailer for Clown.
· Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Ingmar Bergman always dabbled in the fantastic, but he really pulled out the stops in this tale of an artist who disappears after moving with his wife to an abandoned island. Well, abandoned except the terrifying, demented family who lives in the mansion on the hill! Forget everything you know about Bergman: This is a horror film through and through and it contains imagery that will haunt you for weeks, especially one scene involving a puppet show with a live man. And of course, lurking beneath the surface is Bergman's unique brand of existential dread. Good luck going to sleep.