Classic horrors

G

Gina_star

New member
and other stuff :D

The Fly
The Fly 2
American Werewolf in London
The Howling
Cujo
The Langoliers
The Shining
Carrie
Chainsaw Massicre
Village of The Dammed
Children of the corn
Amitiville Horror
The Thing
Xtro
Silver Bullet
Scanners
Razorback
The Excorcist
Chucky..chilRAB play
It
Nightmare on Elm Street
Stephen King and John Carpenter stuff

Some films to get..i enjoyed em..lol,,The classics were great..
 
Some of the early Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe movies made during the early 1960s are considered cult classics today.

Two of the best are

Fall Of The House of Usher

and

Pit And the Pendulam

both starring Vincent Price who hammed both of them up perfectly because he MADE those films classics.

Although both dated, they still ooze a tremendous atmosphere.
 
Agreed, both excellent films. the Pit and the Pendulum was the first time I remember being totally freaked out at as a nipper, what was my Mum thinking letting me watch that?!!
 
Classic horror to me is 'Hammer House Of Horror' era. Then you have general horror, Halloween, Zombies etc

However I agree 'The Haunted' is one of the scariest paranormal films I have ever seen based on a true story. Pisses all over 'Paranormal Activity' being frightening.
Now this could perhaps make a good remake in the right hanRAB.
 
Just finished watching The Bela Lugosi Collection this weekend with the Black Cat, Murders In The Rue Morgue and The Raven. True classics :cool:.
 
Is it The Black Cat or The Raven in which Bela has Boris chained up and hisses at him rapaciously "Do you know what I'm going to do to you now... have you ever seen a live animal stripped of its skin?" :eek:

I first fell in love with all these old black-and-white horror films as a kid, although hence then pretty impervious to psychological horror; only seeing them again years later through adult eyes have I come to realise how sable they were, and how they can still pack quite a punch if you sit down and actually absorb the stories as well as revelling in the atmosphere.
 
It's The Black Cat :D. Such a good line! Totally agree about them still packing a punch. I revisited the original Mystery of the Wax Museum with Fay Wray and Lionell Atwill recently - God it's still great after all these years. I remember as a kid thinking they lasted forever but most of the old Universal horrors are actually quite short.
 
If you're anything like me that's probably the absorbance in the atmosphere which I alluded to :)

I've still got an old Channel 4 recording of MOTWM which retains an ethereal technicolor lustre even on VHS. I'd love to catch up with it on DVD, thanks for the suggestion!

I think there is definitely something timeless about the output of the early-mid 30's American horror period - excepting the Val Lewton cycle of the 40s, the ensuing horror of the 40s and into the 50s was much more... I don't know, not exactly 'glossified' but definitely varnished in a way which took the edge off. The influence of the German/East European emigr
 
Totally agree - the early thirties period were definitely heavily influenced by the '20s expressionist German directors such as F.W. Murnau, Robert Wiene and Fritz Lang. The house in The Black Cat is entirely Bauhaus in style.

I'm also a fan of the Corman/Poe films, especially the Masque Of The red Death, The Fall Of The House Of Usher and The Premature Burial (that gravedigger whistling "Cockles And Mussels" haunted me :eek:).
 
Yep, rather sadly it tailed off by about 1935 with Mad Love being the last notable entry; although one or two subsequent films in the Boris Karloff canon were notably arcane, particularly the sadism-laced period tale of twin brothers The Black Room, directed by Roy William Neill and foreshadowing his work on some of the more memorable of the later Sherlock Holmes films. There was however a one-off and notably glorious resurrection of the style in 1939's Son Of Frankenstein, the visual craziness of which is what I think originally instilled the classic horror bug in me - Friday night, being allowed to stay up way past bedtime, lights off - it all wove a magic spell.

Outside of the established 'classics' sphere and sadly forgotten now too is White Zombie, a visually poetic tale which plays bewitchingly like a silent movie with dialogue, and feels like something from another world let alone another era.
 
I must get 'round to watching this, it's an extra on the Vincent Price version DVD. Lionel was fantastic, I love seeing him in films, he is a true unsung hero of the genre. Though I did read something a little sad about him the other day, basically he (Allegedly) liked a bit of 'how's your father' in a group style, and some visual accompaniment, and as usual, Hollywood well and truly 'f***ed' him over about it, being the moral institution it was, is and shall always be!!!! Ultimately lead to his early death...... Apparently!
 
Back
Top