Horror movies. The term conjures up images of blood-soaked crazed slashers hacking up scantily clad teenagers. And while that can be entertaining, it’s not particularly edifying, especially for Catholics trying to keep themselves as unsullied by the world as possible.
But, like all creative fields, there is a lot of good in horror. Indeed, the horror genre is, I find, often edifying in a way that others aren’t. Its power lies in its uncompromising nature; in horror, the forces of evil are stripped of their disguises and made unmistakably real and revolting. There’s no chance of claiming that ‘tolerance’ is the proper response to Dracula, or that Lycanthropes have much to offer if only we could accept them. The naked face of evil is meant only to be resisted, opposed, and denounced. A good horror story teaches us to hate and fear evil: an important job and one of the reasons they’ve been so popular throughout human history.
Halloween, to my mind, is the time for celebrating this aspect of human culture: the creepy, the macabre, and the horrific. This is when we sit back of evening and enjoy a nice spooky story.
Now, most of us are familiar with the great names of horror: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist, Psycho, and so on. But if you want something new, here are seven quality spook films you might not have seen, but which are well worth your time, and which will do no harm to your soul.
7. The Devil Rides Out (1968):
Adapted from one of Dennis Wheatley’s impeccably researched Black Magic series, this film features the great Christopher Lee in a rare heroic role as an occult expert trying to save his (rather useless) friend from a Satanic cult led by British character actor Charles Gray. Lee’s arsenal includes crosses, holy water, Latin prayers, and invocations to the angels, culminating in the definitive triumph of the Cross itself.
A spooky film that invokes real evil forces for it’s bad guys, this movie has become all the more relevant (and frightening) with the recent rise of Satanism in the U.S. Some of the effects are a little cheesy (as to be expected), but the sense of overwhelming evil and corruption pitted against absolute goodness remains powerful.
In the backwoods of Appalachia, storekeeper Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen) loses his beloved son to a reckless group of teenagers. Mad with grief (and misinterpreting their attempts to get help as a heartless abandonment of his injured boy), he seeks out an old witch and has her summon the demon of vengeance, known locally as Pumpkinhead. But as the killings start, Harley discovers just how terrible revenge can be.
Sometimes a story doesn’t need to be about good and evil: sometimes it’s enough for it to show just what evil is and does. Pumpkinhead is a deceptively powerful and intelligent dissection of the dangers and horrors of vengeance, and how hard such a thing is to stop once it’s begun. The dangers of acting out of rage, the brutality and injustice of personal violence, and the corrupting nature it has are all brought to the screen. Be warned; it’s a fairly brutal film, and its direct-to-video roots are occasionally evident, but those who seek it out will find an unexpectedly wise movie underneath the low budget.
5. The Thing From Another World (1951):
One of the very first alien invasion flicks. An Air Force installation near the North Pole discovers a flying saucer buried in the ice. Their attempts to remove it accidentally destroy the saucer, but they manage to salvage one of the passengers. Unfortunately, the creature escapes the ice and proves to both be virtually invulnerable and to have a taste for human blood.
The alien itself isn’t very frightening (it’s played by Gunsmoke star James Arness in makeup), but the way it’s deployed is. The alien’s kept off screen most of the time, or only seen in shadows. The creepiness comes from knowing that it’s out there, that it’s coming, but not knowing exactly where it is.
This allows for several very creepy sequences and one of the best jump scares in film history. It’s also just a really darn entertaining film, with clever dialogue, great characters, and a fast-moving script. A great film for a night in with the family.
More of a comedy than a horror film, but featuring some great atmosphere and nicely creepy scenes to go along with the humor. Bob Hope stars as a radio jockey who ends up on the wrong side of the mob and flees to the Caribbean, where he meets the lovely Paulette Goddard and finds she has recently inherited a haunted mansion.
Hope, together with his loyal sidekick, Willie Best, determines to see that she is able to safely take possession. An atypically heroic role by Hope (who usually played lovable cowards) makes for an enjoyably exciting and chilling outing that feels like a boy’s adventure story brought to life. Of course it’s hilarious as well, with great jokes from both Hope and Best (my favorite being an ad lib about zombies that I won’t dare spoil).
The only thing that might be considered objectionable to some viewers is Willie Best’s rather stereotypical ‘cowardly black servant’ role, but I don’t think that’s fair. For one thing, Best is no more cowardly than Hope, and for another Best was a respected talent in his own right who didn’t have a lot of choice in the roles he got, and it hardly seems fair to judge a film made seventy-odd years ago by present standards of racial sensitivity. For the time, I think Best’s role is unobjectionable and certainly no reason not to enjoy a very fun movie.
3. The City of the Dead (1960):
A college student studying witchcraft gets a little more than she bargained for when she ventures into a small New England town where a witch burning was supposedly held in the colonial days.
Another film featuring the great Christopher Lee (here in full villain mode) and unfortunately timely in light of the recent upsurge in Satanism, this relatively obscure flick has great atmosphere, more than one unexpected twist, and, like The Devil Rides Out ends with a crushing victory for the Cross.
It’s a low-budget, sometimes cheesy flick, but decidedly creepy and with lots to enjoy. Also available under the title Horror Hotel, which is also an alternate title to a very bad Tobe Hooper film from 1976, so try not to get the two confused.
2. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931):
My pick for the finest horror film of the 1930s is Robert Mamoulian’s masterful interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale of man’s duality. Dr. Jekyll (Fredric March, who won a well-deserved Academy Award for his performance) is a young, idealistic doctor working in Victorian London and passionately in love with his fiancée.
When her overbearing father insists upon an absurdly long engagement period, however, Dr. Jekyll’s self control weakens and he uses his recently-discovered formula to unleash his evil self: Mr. Hyde, who proceeds to do everything that Jekyll secretly wishes he could do.
A brilliant parable about the dangers of letting your carnal desires run rampant, the classic story is given new power by an intelligent script, a mesmerizing lead performance, and some stunning cinematography and special effects (including the transformation sequences, which are amazing). Oh, and if you go in thinking that, as it’s an early 30s film it will be tame for modern audiences, you’re going to be in for a rude awakening. Mr. Hyde is a terrifying figure in the truest and most real sense of the term. It’s a movie that makes the corrupting nature of sin real in a way few others do.
Certainly one of the greatest horror films ever made is Robert Wise’s adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House. The novel is great, but for my money the film is even better. There’s not much in the way of a moral to this one; it’s just a pure fright film. But don’t let that put you off; this is one of the most intelligent, best written, and creepiest horror films you’ll ever see.
A psychologist studying ghosts invites three people to join him at Hill House: a notoriously creepy mansion somewhere in New England that seems to gravitate tragedy and corruption. Things are creepy enough to begin with, but all Hell breaks loose when the doctor’s skeptical wife shows up determined to prove the house a fraud.
The movie is all the creepier for the fact that we never see anything. There is one special effect in the whole movie (and Lord knows that’s scary enough); all the rest is done with camera angles, sound effects, and a very talented cast. In the end we’re left queasily uncertain whether the events of the film were really supernatural or merely the products of the deranged mind of one of the visitors.
A slow-moving film for mature audiences, the film features unflattering depictions of a Puritan form of Christianity, an oblique (and not especially sympathetic) portrayal of a Lesbian character, and several references to moral corruption, but as it’s all part of creating the atmosphere I don’t think anyone will find it seriously objectionable. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t confuse this with the notoriously awful 1999 remake.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
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