It's a Horror Classic! - Part 4

The story begins as an innocuous romantic triangle involving wealthy, spoiled Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), handsome Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), and schoolteacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette). The human story begins in a San Francisco pet shop and culminates at the home of Mitch's mother (Jessica Tandy) at Bodega Bay, where the characters' sense of security is slowly eroded by the curious behavior of the birds in the area. At first, it's no more than a sea gull swooping down and pecking at Melanie's head. Things take a truly ugly turn when hundreds of birds converge on a children's party. There is never an explanation as to why the birds have run amok, but once the onslaught begins, there's virtually no letup.

The film that has become the master work in Italian horror maestro Dario Argento's canon, Deep Red holds up brilliantly despite the plethora of copycat slasher films it inspired in the years to follow. The film opens with a flashback murder shown from the perspective of a child while an eerie nursery rhyme plays. Cut to the present, pianist Marc Daly (David Hemmings) witnesses the murder of a psychic while chatting with his drunken pal, Carlo (Gabriele Lavia). While the police investigate, Marc joins forces with attractive reporter Gianna (Daria Nicolodi). Once Marc realizes that he is a target for the killer, he seeks help from Giordani (Glauco Mauri), a professor of the paranormal, who soon becomes one of the killer's victims. Marc's research leads him to an abandoned house where he discovers a secret room that hides a corpse. Before he can call the cops, he is knocked out and awakens to find the place in flames while Gianna holds him. Racing to the neighbors to call for help, Marc discovers an important clue that leads him to a nearby school where he finally finds the killer's identity. The madman attacks him, but the police arrive to save Marc. Though the case appears to be solved, Marc comes to the disturbing realization that one piece of the puzzle remains.

Director David Fincher's dark, stylish thriller ranks as one of the decade's most influential box-office successes. Set in a hellish vision of a New York-like city, where it is always raining and the air crackles with impending death, the film concerns Det. William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a homicide specialist just one week from a well-deserved retirement. Every minute of his 32 years on the job is evident in Somerset's worn, exhausted face, and his soul aches with the pain that can only come from having seen and felt far too much. But Somerset's retirement must wait for one last case, for which he is teamed with young hotshot David Mills (Brad Pitt), the fiery detective set to replace him at the end of the week. Mills has talked his reluctant wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), into moving to the big city so that he can tackle important cases, but his first and Somerset's last are more than either man has bargained for. A diabolical serial killer is staging grisly murders, choosing victims representing the seven deadly sins. First, an obese man is forced to eat until his stomach ruptures to represent gluttony, then a wealthy defense lawyer is made to cut off a pound of his own flesh as penance for greed. Somerset initially refuses to take the case, realizing that there will be five more murders, ghastly sermons about lust, sloth, pride, wrath, and envy presented by a madman to a sinful world. Somerset is correct, and something within him cannot let the case go, forcing the weary detective to team with Mills and see the case to its almost unspeakably horrible conclusion. The moody photography is by Darius Khondji; the nauseatingly vivid special effects are by makeup artist Rob Bottin, best known for more fantasy-oriented work in films like The Howling (1981).

Director Roman Polanski casts himself in the lead of the psychological thriller The Tenant. Trelkovsky (Polanski) rents an apartment in a spooky old residential building, where his neighbors -- mostly old recluses -- eye him with suspicious contempt. Upon discovering that the apartment's previous tenant, a beautiful young woman, jumped from the window in a suicide attempt, Trelkovsky begins obsessing over the dead woman. Growing increasingly paranoid, Trelkovsky convinces himself that his neighbors plan to kill him. He even comes to the conclusion that Stella (Isabel Adjani), the woman he has fallen in love with, is in on the "plot." Ultimately, Polanski assumes the identity of the suicide victim -- and inherits her self-destructive urges. Some critics found the movie tedious and overdone; others compared it to Polanski's early breakthrough, Repulsion. The film was based on Le Locataire Chimerique, a novel by Roland Topor.

A righteous police officer investigating the disappearance of a young girl comes into conflict with the unusual residents of a secluded Scottish isle in this unsettling, intelligent chiller. Brought to the island of Summerisle by an anonymous letter, Edward Woodward's constable is surprised to discover that the island's population suspiciously denies the missing girl's very existence. Even more shocking, at least to the traditionally pious law office, the island is ruled by a libertarian society organized around pagan rituals. Repelled by the open acceptance of sexuality, nature worship, and even witchcraft, the officer takes an antagonistic attitude towards the people and their leader, an eccentric but charming English lord (Christopher Lee). The officer's unease intensifies as he continues his investigation, slowly coming to fear that the girl's disappearance may be linked in a particularly horrifying manner to an upcoming public festival. Anthony Shaffer's meticulously crafted screenplay creates a thoroughly convincing alternative society, building tension through slow discovery and indirect suggestion and making the terrifying climax all the more effective. Performances are also perfectly tuned, with Woodward suitably priggish as the investigator and horror icon Lee delivering one of his most accomplished performances as Lord Summerisle. Little noticed during its original theatrical run due to studio edits and a limited release, the film's intelligence and uncanny tone has since attracted a devoted cult following.

Kwaidan is an impressively mounted anthology horror film based on four stories by Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-born writer who began his career in the United States at the age of 19 and moved permanently to Japan in 1890 at the age of 40, where he eventually became a subject of the empire and took on the name Koizumi Yakuno. Hearn became a conduit of Japanese culture to western audiences, publishing journalism and then fiction incorporating traditional Japanese themes and characters. "Black Hair," the first tale, concerns a samurai who cannot support his wife; he leaves her for a life of wealth and ease with a princess. Returning years later, he spends the night with his wife in their now-dilapidated house, only to awake to a horrifying discovery which drives him insane. In "The Woman of the Snow" (deleted from U.S. theatrical prints after the film's Los Angeles opening; it is on the DVD version), two woodcutters seek refuge during a snowstorm in what appears to be an abandoned hut. A snow witch appears and kills one of them but lets his partner free. Years later, the survivor meets and married a lovely young woman, only to learn her true identity. The most visually impressive tale is "Hoichi the Earless," in which a blind musician is asked by the ghost of a samurai to play for his late infant lord at a tomb. The monks who house the musician cover him with tattoos to prevent any harm coming to him, but they forget his ears. He returns from the engagement with his ears cut off; however, his misadventure propels him to fame. "In a Cup of Tea" concerns a samurai who is haunted by the vision of a man he sees reflected in his tea. Even after he drinks from the cup, he still sees the man while on guard duty.

"The Silence of the Lambs" is going to cause a sensation. It's the kind of movie you can't wait to tell people you've seen ... and survived. Jonathan Demme's devastating version of Thomas Harris's chilling best seller is a knockout. The movie pulls you to the edge of your seat in its first minutes and never lets you sit back. Oscar winner Jodie Foster stars as Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee handed a particularly difficult assignment by her boss, Jack Crawford (a buttoned-down Scott Glenn). He wants her to interview the infamous serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), in his maximum-security cell. Crawford thinks that Lecter -- also known as "Hannibal the Cannibal" for reasons that become evident in the film -- can help the Feds track down another mad murderer on the loose. He's a nasty piece of work dubbed Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) by the press because he skins his female victims. "Do you scare easily, Starling?" Crawford asks. "Not yet, sir," she replies. Famous last words ... or close enough. Lecter literally licks his lips when he sees what Crawford has sent him -- a pretty young woman he can toy with to his heart's delight. He'll help her find Buffalo Bill, he says, but only if she'll tell him about herself. He'll eat her soul if he can't devour her flesh. The pressure on Clarice mounts when Buffalo Bill kidnaps a senator's daughter (Brooke Smith). Lecter's cooperation becomes crucial as time runs out for the imprisoned young woman. Clarice's spine-tingling sessions with Lecter are the movie's stunning set pieces. Mr. Hopkins plays Lecter with a lunatic's gleam and a Karloff lilt. It's an astonishing performance -- a smiling psychopath who lasciviously sniffs out his visitor's cheap perfume and her steely ambitiousness. He's both mind-bendingly frightening and lethally appealing. And he knows he fascinates Clarice with his perverse brilliance and his dangerous bemusement. Ms. Foster provides an expert counterpoint for her co-star's psychotic manipulations. She refuses to play victimized fly to his predatory spider, but she feels the terrifying brush of his web-spinning all the same. Every choice she makes is just right -- from the throaty twang of her West Virginia accent to the low-key intensity with which she goes about doing her job. She's tentative yet tenacious, vulnerable yet rock-solid. Mr. Demme made his reputation by such offbeat, whimsically eccentric films as "Melvin and Howard," "Something Wild" and "Married to the Mob." There's virtually nothing in his work to indicate he could pull off something as menacingly coiled as "The Silence of the Lambs." But he does much more than pull it off; he nails it cold. The director doesn't give an inch; at the same time, he doesn't give in to routine slasher tactics. What he does show us -- Buffalo Bill's basement Chamber of Horrors or what's left of Lecter's latest victims -- is plenty scary. But in the best tradition of great horror-thrillers, what he leaves unseen is absolutely petrifying. Plus, he leavens the tension with a touch of macabre black humor. When Lecter points out that, unlike most serial killers, he never kept trophies of his victims, Clarice replies with a perfectly straight face, "No, you ate yours." Before her first meeting with the not-so-good doctor, Clarice is cautioned by Crawford, "Don't tell him anything personal. You don't want Hannibal Lecter inside your head." But that's just where this movie puts him -- right in there with Norman Bates and the rest of cinema's dark pantheon of legendary psychos. And that's exactly where he belongs. "The Silence of the Lambs" gets under your skin and in your head. It's a bona fide classic of its kind.

Vampyr ranks in many circles as one of the greatest horror films of all time. Inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, the story concerns a mysterious series of killings, committed by a crone of a female vampire (Henriette Gerard). The story is told through the eyes of a holiday reveller (Julian West), who at first scoffs at the notion of a supernatural murderer, but who is eventually forced to believe that there are more things in heaven and earth. Dreyer offers few explanations of the phenomena he presents on screen: the strange and frightening happenings just happen, as casually as any everyday occurrence. As was his custom, Dreyer mostly uses nonprofessionals in his cast. Vampyr is available in a wide variety of severely edited and duped versions.

This is a modern horror film with an old-fashioned touch, relying on suspense and the suggestion of the supernatural to generate a disturbing sense of the Uncanny. In the manner of classic haunted house movies like THE INNOCENTS (1960) and THE HAUNTING (1963), THE OTHERS uses a deliberately steady pace to increase tension, gradually drawing viewers into its mystery until they are so engaged that they completely susceptible to the effectively executed scare tactics. Although the actual shocks are few and far between, the film maintains interest with its intelligent storytelling, and the rich atmosphere sustain the mood of supernatural dread throughout, so that when the scares do come, they are worth the wait—even simple things like a slamming door are guaranteed to send you hurtling out of your seat with a scream. Of course, the pacing is a gambit, and it does not always pay off; repeat viewings may have you wishing that the editing were not quite so slow and stately. The scare scenes remain effective, but you may find yourself growing impatient while awaiting their arrival.

This classic horror movie based on Stephen King's first novel stars Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, a shy, diffident teenager who is the butt of practical jokes at her small-town high school. Her blind panic at her first menstruation, a result of ignorance and religious guilt drummed into her by her fanatical mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie), only causes her classmates' vicious cruelty to escalate, despite the attentions of her overly solicitous gym teacher (Betty Buckley). Finally, when the venomous Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen) engineers a reprehensible prank at the school prom, Carrie lashes out in a horrifying display of her heretofore minor telekinetic powers. Many films had featured school bullies, but Carrie was one of the first to focus on the special brand of cruelty unique to teenage girls. Carrie's world is presented as a snake pit, where the well-to-do female students all have fangs -- even the reticent Sue Snell (Amy Irving) -- and all the males are blind pawns, sexually twisted around the fingers of Chris and her evil cronies. The talented supporting cast includes John Travolta, P.J. Soles, and William Katt. One of the genre's true classics, the film was followed by a sequel in 1999, as well as by a famously unsuccessful Broadway musical adaptation that starred Betty Buckley, the movie's gym teacher, as Margaret White.

Satan's son has arrived on Earth and He's not about to let human parents get in the way. When his wife Katherine's (Lee Remick) pregnancy ends in a stillbirth in a Rome hospital, U.S. diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) substitutes another baby, whose mother died. Little Damien (Harvey Stephens) thrives, but, at his fifth birthday party, his nanny mysteriously dies; Father Brennan (Patrick G. Troughton) also expires after warning Thorn that he has adopted Lucifer's son. While sinister new nanny Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw) assiduously protects Damien, Thorn's fears escalate when photographer Jennings (David Warner) shows him pictures from Damien's party with marks suggesting how the nanny and Brennan would die. Thorn seeks out Bugenhagen (Leo McKern), an exorcist who confirms Damien's identity and tells Thorn that the only solution is to kill his adopted son. As the bodies pile up, Thorn tries to do his duty, but trust the law to get in the way of saving the world from future Armageddon.

Don Siegel's classic exercise in psychological science fiction has often been interpreted as a cautionary fable about the blacklisting hysteria of the McCarthy era. It can be read as a political metaphor or enjoyed as a fine low-budget suspense movie, and it works well either way. Kevin McCarthy stars as Miles Bennel, a doctor in the small California community of Santa Mira, where several patients begin reporting that their loved ones don't seem to be themselves lately. They look the same but seem cold, emotionally distant, and somehow unfamiliar. The longer Miles looks into these reports, the more stock he places in them, and in time he makes a shocking discovery: aliens from another world are taking over Santa Mira, one citizen at a time. Emissaries from a distant planet have sent massive seed pods containing creatures that can assume the exact physical likeness of anyone they choose. When Santa Mirans go to sleep, the pod creatures take on the shape of their victims and then destroy their bodies. The aliens may look the same, but they possess no human emotions and, like plants, are concerned only with propagating themselves and eventually subsuming the earth. Needless to say, Miles and his friends are terrified, but since it's hard to tell who's a person and who's a pod, they're at a loss for what to do, especially when it seems that there are increasingly more aliens than humans. Invasion of the Body Snatchers builds tension slowly and steadily, dealing not in the shock of bug-eyed monsters common to other 1950s science-fiction movies but in the unnerving possibility that the enemy is among us -- and impossible to tell from our allies. The ultra-paranoid conclusion of Siegel's original cut was softened by Allied Artists, who added a framing device that suggested help was on the way. This coda was as effective in blunting the film's grim conclusion as giving a Band-Aid to a beheading victim; few films of the era make it more painfully clear that for these people (and maybe for ourselves), there's no turning back and no way home. Keep an eye peeled for a bit part by soon-to-be-legendary Western director Sam Peckinpah, who plays a meter reader and also (uncredited) helped write the screenplay. Based on a novel by Jack Finney, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was remade in 1978 by Philip Kaufman and in 1993 by Abel Ferrara (as Body Snatchers); and its influence can be felt from The Stepford Wives (1975) to The X-Files.

Fritz Lang's classic early talkie crime melodrama is set in 1931 Berlin. The police are anxious to capture an elusive child murderer (Peter Lorre), and they begin rounding up every criminal in town. The underworld leaders decide to take the heat off their activities by catching the child killer themselves. Once the killer is fingered, he is marked with the letter "M" chalked on his back. He is tracked down and captured by the combined forces of the Berlin criminal community, who put him on trial for his life in a kangaroo court. The killer pleads for mercy, whining that he can't control his homicidal instincts. The police close in and rescue the killer from the underworld so that he can stand trial again in "respectable" circumstances. Some prints of the film end with a caution to the audience to watch after their children more carefully. Filmed in Germany, M was the film that solidified Fritz Lang's reputation with American audiences, and it also made a star out of Peter Lorre (previously a specialist in comedy roles!). M was remade by Hollywood in 1951, with David Wayne giving a serviceable performance as the killer.

A decade of wisecracking sequels have not diminished the power of this striking horror film from the director of Scream. Teenagers in a small town are dropping like flies, apparently in the grip of mass hysteria causing their suicides. A cop's daughter (Heather Langenkamp) traces the cause to child molester Fred Krueger (Robert Englund), who was burned alive by angry parents many years before. Krueger has now come back in the dreams of his killers' children, claiming their lives as his revenge. The teenaged leads are sympathetic and intelligent, unlike the dumb victims presented in most films of the period, and they are ably backed up by veterans like John Saxon and Ronee Blakley. Director Wes Craven creates moments of real dread by examining the line between nightmares and reality, as well as the "sins of the parents" theme, and although the film is quite gory, it never resorts to cheap bloodletting for its effect. A unique and disturbing experience, this film is highly recommended for horror buffs.

Tobe Hooper's influential cult classic continues the subgenre of horror films based on the life and "career" of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein, which began with Alfred Hitchcock's own influential cult classic Psycho. When Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) hears that the Texas cemetery where her grandfather is buried has been vandalized, she gathers her wheelchair-bound brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) and several other friends together to see if grandpa's remains are still in one piece. While in the area, Sally and her friends decide to visit grandfather's old farmhouse. Unfortunately, a family of homicidal slaughterhouse workers who take their job home with them have taken over the house next door. Included amongst the brood is Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a chainsaw-wielding human horror show who wears a face mask made out of human skin. Sally's friends are rapidly exterminated one-by-one by the next-door neighbors, leaving only Sally left to fight off Leatherface and his clan.

In late 1978, a small horror film opened in Bowling Green, Kentucky (before moving on to Chicago and New York City) that would change the face of the genre. Initially dismissed by many serious critics as unworthy of attention or praise, the motion picture looked headed for an oblivion where it would never make back its small, $300,000 budget. Then, months later, Tom Allen's insightful and complimentary essay appeared in The Village Voice. Suddenly, critics began to notice that there was more to this film than initially met the eye. Because of its title, Halloween has frequently been grouped together with all the other splatter films that populated theaters throughout the late-1970s and early-1980s. However, while Halloween is rightfully considered the father of the modern slasher genre, it is not a member (the Halloween sequels, on the other hand, are). This is not a gruesome motion picture -- there is surprisingly little graphic violence and almost no blood. Halloween is built on suspense, not gore, and initiated more than a few of today's common horror/thriller cliches. The ultimate success of the movie, however, encouraged other film makers to try their hand at this sort of enterprise, and it didn't take long for someone to decide that audiences wanted as many explicitly grisly scenes as the running length would allow. By the time Halloween's sequel was released in 1981, the objective of this sort of movie was no longer to scare its viewers, but to gross them out. From a shock-and-suspense point-of-view, Halloween is the rival of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. With only a few arguable exceptions (such as The Exorcist), there isn't another post-1970 release that comes close to it in terms of scaring the living hell out of a viewer. Halloween starts out in a creepy fashion with a brutal murder, and never lets up from there. Every frame drips with atmosphere. Who cares that it was filmed during the spring in California instead of during the autumn in fictional Haddonfield, Illinois? Halloween was the film that earned Jamie Lee Curtis the infamous title of "Scream Queen." She plays Laurie Strode, the virginal protagonist. Curtis' capable interpretation of the gawky, awkward Laurie is frequently overlooked in analyses of the movie and its genre, but she effectively conveys the feelings and aspirations of a shy, insecure teenager. It's hard to believe that the actress would develop (in more ways than one) into a woman whose sexual appeal would drive pictures like A Fish Called Wanda. The film opens with a long, single-shot prologue that takes place on Halloween night, 1963. A young Michael Myers watches as his older sister, Judith, sneaks upstairs for a quickie with a guy from school. After the boyfriend has departed, Michael takes a knife out of the kitchen drawer, ascends the staircase, and stabs Judith to death. The entire sequence employs the subjective point-of-view, an approach that writer/director John Carpenter returns to repeatedly throughout the movie. Only after the deed is done do we learn that Michael is only a grade-schooler. The bulk of the movie takes place fifteen years later. Michael, confined to an asylum for the criminally insane for more than ten years, escapes on the night before Halloween. His doctor, Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance), believing Michael to be the embodiment of evil, tracks the killer back to his hometown of Haddonfield. From there, it's a race against time as Loomis seeks to locate and stop Michael before he starts again where he left off in 1963. Michael's primary victims are Laurie and her two best friends, Annie (Nancy Loomis) and Lynda (P.J. Soles). Throughout the film, Michael is shown gradually closing in on the girls, until, in the final act, Laurie is involved in a face-to-face fight for her life. Much has been made of the fact that the key to survival in Halloween is being a virgin. The three girls who have sex with their boyfriends (Judith Myers, Annie, and Lynda) don't survive their encounters with Michael. Laurie, who has nothing to do with boys, does. Co-writers Carpenter and Debra Hill have stated numerous times that this was not a conscious theme, but, ever since Halloween, the standard for slasher films has been that sexual promiscuity leads to a violent end. Nick Castle plays Michael (who is referred to in the end credits as "the Shape") as an implacable, inhuman adversary. Because he wears a painted white Captain Kirk mask, we only once (briefly) see his features, and this makes him all the more frightening. He kills without making a sound or changing his expression, and his movements are often slow and zombie-like. Carpenter is exceedingly careful in chosing the camera angles he uses to shoot Michael. Before the climax, there's never a clear close-up -- he's always concealed by shadows, shown in the distance, or presented as otherwise obscured. This approach makes for an especially ominous villain. Subsequent Halloweens delved more deeply into Michael's origins and his connection to Laurie, but, in this one, he remains an enigma, and the lack of a clear motive makes his actions all the more terrifying. Another important element of Halloween's success is our ability to identify with the trio of female protagonists, and Carpenter establishes a rapport between the audience and the characters by employing intelligent, realistic dialogue and placing the girls in believable situations. For Annie and Lynda, the most important thing about Halloween night is finding a place to have sex with their boyfriends. For Laurie, it's making sure the kid she's babysitting is having a good time. Annie and Lynda are blissfully unaware of their danger until it's too late, but Laurie recognizes her peril. Meanwhile, if Michael represents pure evil, Sam Loomis is the avenging angel. He's the voice of reason that no one listens to, and, in the end, he's the cavalry coming over the mountain, gun blazing. Halloween is one of those films where the attention to detail is evident in every frame. While there are many memorable moments, three scenes stand out above the rest. The first is the long, unbroken opening sequence where the young Michael dons a clown mask and murders his sister. Often copied, but never equaled, this scene was unique for its time and reminiscent of Psycho's shower murder for its effect. The second also occurs early in the movie, as Michael escapes from the asylum during a rain storm. To this day, I find these to be the most chilling three minutes of the movie. Finally, there's the scene near the end where Laurie is banging on a locked door while Michael approaches slowly and inexorably from behind. It's a credit to Carpenter that, no matter how many times you've seen the movie, the tension at this point still mounts to a palpable level. Despite being relatively simple and unsophisticated, Halloween's music is one of its strongest assets. Carpenter's dissonant, jarring themes provide the perfect backdrop for Michael's activity, proving that a film doesn't need a symphonic score by an A-line composer to be effective. Carpenter's Halloween main title, one of the horror genre's best-recognizable tunes, can bring chills even away from the theater. Try putting it in the tape deck when you're alone in the car sometime after midnight on a lonely country road, and see if you feel secure. The final body count in Halloween is surprisingly low (the immediate sequel, Halloween 2, rectified this matter, but that's another story), but the terror quotient is high. This is the kind of impeccably crafted motion picture that burrows deep into our psyche and connects with the dark, hidden terrors that lurk there. Halloween is not a perfect movie, but no recent horror film has attained this pinnacle (as evidenced by the plaudits heaped upon it in Wes Craven's recent Scream). Likewise, John Carpenter has never come close to recapturing Halloween's artistic or commercial success, though he has tried many times. Halloween remains untouched -- a modern classic of the most horrific kind.

Roman Polanski’s brilliant horror thriller tale was nominated for two Oscars, winning one, Supporting Actress for Ruth Gordon. Polanski adapated to the screen (also as a writer) Ira levin’s popular novel about witchcraft in modern-fay Manhattan. Well cast, Mia Farrow plays the fragie wife, Rosemary, of John Cassavetes, a young, striving actor who will do anything to advance his fledgling career. The young couple moves into an old, lush apartment house, where their neighbors are a nosy elderly couple (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer). After Rosemary gets pregnant, she begins to suspect that something strange, even diabolical is going on–and she turns out to right. Supremely mounted, the film benefits from Polanski’s sharp narrative and technical skills, and from polished production values by cinematographer William Fraker and production designer Richard Sylbert. There is ominous tension in the film from first frame to last, and the material proves to be ideal for Polanski’s dark sensibility and talent. The superb supporting cast includes Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Patsy Kelly, Elisha Cook, Jr. and Charles Grodin.

Adapted by James Agee from a novel by Davis Grubb, The Night of the Hunter represented legendary actor Charles Laughton's only film directing effort. Combining stark realism with Germanic expressionism, the movie is a brilliant good-and-evil parable, with "good" represented by a couple of farm kids and a pious old lady, and "evil" literally in the hands of a posturing psychopath. Imprisoned with thief Ben Harper (Peter Graves), phony preacher Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) learns that Ben has hidden a huge sum of money somewhere near his home. Upon his release, the murderously misogynistic Powell insinuates himself into Ben's home, eventually marrying his widow Willa (Shelley Winters). Eventually all that stands between Powell and the money are Ben's son (Billy Chapin) and daughter (Sally Jane Bruce), who take refuge in a home for abandoned children presided over by the indomitable, scripture-quoting Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish). The war of wills between Mitchum and Gish is the heart of the film's final third, a masterful blend of horror and lyricism. Laughton's tight, disciplined direction is superb -- and all the more impressive when one realizes that he intensely disliked all child actors. The music by Walter Schumann and the cinematography of Stanley Cortez are every bit as brilliant as the contributions by Laughton and Agee. Overlooked on its first release, The Night of the Hunter is now regarded as a classic.

"In space, no one can hear you scream." A close encounter of the third kind becomes a Jaws-style nightmare when an alien invades a spacecraft in Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror classic. On the way home from a mission for the Company, the Nostromo's crew is woken up from hibernation by the ship's Mother computer to answer a distress signal from a nearby planet. Capt. Dallas's (Tom Skerritt) rescue team discovers a bizarre pod field, but things get even stranger when a face-hugging creature bursts out of a pod and attaches itself to Kane (John Hurt). Over the objections of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), science officer Ash (Ian Holm) lets Kane back on the ship. The acid-blooded incubus detaches itself from an apparently recovered Kane, but an alien erupts from Kane's stomach and escapes. The alien starts stalking the humans, pitting Dallas and his crew (and cat) against a malevolent killing machine that also has a protector in the nefarious Company.

This greatest of all Frankenstein movies begins during a raging thunderstorm. Warm and cozy inside their palatial villa, Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon), Percy Shelley (Douglas Walton), and Shelley's wife Mary (Elsa Lanchester) engage in morbidly sparkling conversation. The wicked Byron mockingly chastises Mary for frightening the literary world with her recent novel Frankenstein, but Mary insists that her horror tale preached a valuable moral, that man was not meant to dabble in the works of God. Moreover, Mary adds that her story did not end with the death of Frankenstein's monster, whereupon she tells the enthralled Byron and Shelley what happened next. Surviving the windmill fire that brought the original 1931 Frankenstein to a close, the Monster (Boris Karloff) quickly revives and goes on another rampage of death and destruction. Meanwhile, his ailing creator Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) discovers that his former mentor, the demented Doctor Praetorius (Ernst Thesiger), plans to create another life-sized monster -- this time a woman! After a wild and wooly "creation" sequence, the bandages are unwrapped, and the Bride of the Monster (Elsa Lanchester again) emerges. Alas, the Monster's tender efforts to connect with his new Mate are rewarded only by her revulsion and hoarse screams. "She hate me," he growls, "Just like others!" Wonderfully acted and directed, The Bride of Frankenstein is further enhanced by the vivid Franz Waxman musical score; even the film's occasional lapses in logic and continuity (it was trimmed from 90 to 75 minutes after the first preview) are oddly endearing. Director James Whale was memorably embodied by Ian McKellen in the Oscar-winning 1998 biopic Gods and Monsters.

When unexpected radiation raises the dead, a microcosm of Average America has to battle flesh-eating zombies in George A. Romero's landmark cheapie horror film. Siblings Johnny (Russ Streiner) and Barbara (Judith O'Dea) whine and pout their way through a graveside visit in a small Pennsylvania town, but it all takes a turn for the worse when a zombie kills Johnny. Barbara flees to an isolated farmhouse where a group of people are already holed up. Bickering and panic ensue as the group tries to figure out how best to escape, while hoards of undead converge on the house; news reports reveal that fire wards them off, while a local sheriff-led posse discovers that if you "kill the brain, you kill the ghoul." After a night of immolation and parricide, one survivor is left in the house.... Romero's grainy black-and-white cinematography and casting of locals emphasize the terror lurking in ordinary life; as in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), Romero's victims are not attacked because they did anything wrong, and the randomness makes the attacks all the more horrifying. Nothing holds the key to salvation, either, whether it's family, love, or law. Topping off the existential dread is Romero's then-extreme use of gore, as zombies nibble on limbs and viscera. Initially distributed by a Manhattan theater chain owner, Night, made for about 100,000 dollars, was dismissed as exploitation, but after a 1969 re-release, it began to attract favorable attention for scarily tapping into Vietnam-era uncertainty and nihilistic anxiety. By 1979, it had grossed over 12 million, inspired a cycle of apocalyptic splatter films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and set the standard for finding horror in the mundane. However cheesy the film may look, few horror movies reach a conclusion as desolately unsettling.

What can be said or written about The Exorcist that hasn't been mentioned already? Even for a horror fan as thorough and verbose as myself, I sit here stumped on how to add some new insights regarding one of the most widely-adored horror films ever made. My generation grew up discovering the film on network television, for the most part, and even that watered-down version was more than enough to freak us out on a deep and primal level. Kids get freaked out by the vomiting, the creepy voice, the horrible scars that crack down the possessed little girl's face... ...but as a grown-up, this simple tale of demonic possession takes on a whole new level of creepiness. It was Blatty's simple approach -- that biblical horror could strike even the most generic of human hosts -- that kept the story from becoming ridiculous, and it was Friedkin's skill that allowed it to leap off the page and right into your gut. Far more than just a horror story, The Exorcist is one of the most ironically "hopeful" terror tales you're likely to see. For all its horrible ideas and confrontational nastiness, the film maintains a quietly noble disposition, and its big finale is as tragic as it is strangely satisfying. Oh, fine. For those who don't know: The Exorcist is about a little girl who gets possessed by a vicious demon, and her only chance of salvation comes from her loyal mother and a team of potentially unprepared priests. Simple, sure. Simple enough to become a smash hit, kick-start a (strangely troubled) film franchise, and spawn 325 (mostly Italian) knock-offs. One of the (very) few horror films to ever clean up at the Oscars (Silence of the Lambs was another), The Exorcist may have earned its initial notoriety due to its deep and freakish scares, but it remains a classic to this day because of the stuff that comes between the scares. To mention that The Exorcist is cut and scored like a dream, populated by fantastic actors, and laden with ideas both disturbing and divine would, again, be redundant. I'm a bit too young to have been there when The Exorcist hit the screens (I was three, actually) but I (and my entire generation of horror fans) have gladly picked up the mantle and fostered the flick's legacy as an inarguable classic of our beloved genre. And it just never gets un-scary. That's the best part.

F. W. Murnau's landmark vampire film Nosferatu isn't merely a variation on Bram Stoker's Dracula: it's a direct steal, so much so that Stoker's widow went to court, demanding in vain that the Murnau film be suppressed and destroyed. The character names have been changed to protect the guilty (in the original German prints, at least), but devotees of Stoker will have little trouble recognizing their Dracula counterparts. The film begins in the Carpathian mountains, where real estate agent Hutter (Gustav von Wagenheim) has arrived to close a sale with the reclusive Herr Orlok (Max Schreck). Despite the feverish warnings of the local peasants, Hutter insists upon completing his journey to Orlok's sinister castle. While enjoying his host's hospitality, Hutter accidently cuts his finger-whereupon Orlok tips his hand by staring intently at the bloody digit, licking his lips. Hutter catches on that Orlok is no ordinary mortal when he witnesses the vampiric nobleman loading himself into a coffin in preparation for his journey to Bremen. By the time the ship bearing Orlok arrives at its destination, the captain and crew have all been killed-and partially devoured. There follows a wave of mysterious deaths in Bremen, which the local authorities attribute to a plague of some sort. But Ellen, Hutter's wife, knows better. Armed with the knowledge that a vampire will perish upon exposure to the rays of the sun, Ellen offers herself to Orlok, deliberately keeping him "entertained" until sunrise. At the cost of her own life, Ellen ends Orlok's reign of terror once and for all. Rumors still persist that Max Schreck, the actor playing Nosferatu, was actually another, better-known performer in disguise. Whatever the case, Schreck's natural countenance was buried under one of the most repulsive facial makeups in cinema history-one that was copied to even greater effect by Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's 1979 remake - Nosferatu the Vampyre.

The Shining met the fate of several other Stanley Kubrick films when it came out; most viewers did not like it, so they rejected it. Most importantly, they did not understand it in any way which allowed them to deal with it constructively. Also, the criticism it received did not clarify the film. It remained obscure and confusing to its viewers. It failed with most viewers for two basic reasons. It was not the same as Stephen King's novel, and it was not terrifying in the conventional way a horror film is supposed to be. So lacking the model of the novel or the conventional horror genre, viewers became disconcerted. The Shining is a Stanley Kubrick film, satiric and abstract. It can be understood, perhaps not fully but enough for one to take pleasure and challenge from it. There are a few perceptions that one can use to help him deal with a Kubrick film. First of all, Kubrick sees human beings as empty, their values shallow and vacuous. Everything about them suggests banality - their dress, their habits, their environment. And since they are banal they don't communicate, except in trite, mundane ways. Their basic banality is most evident in their dialogue. Kubrick (Diane Johnson co-scripted The Shining) intends it to be inane, but critics keep accusing him of not being able to create good dialogue. What better way to show that people can't communicate than by having them speak dialogue that has no life or meaning to it? The interview sequence near the beginning of The Shining has the same quality of dullness as the briefing scene in 2001 - a scene and a film that received many of the complaints about dull human beings as does The Shining. Barry Nelson, with his patter and plastic environment, is a perfect manifestation of banality. The scene is meant to be dissatisfying; it's not meant to excite or provoke. it sets a tone with which the rest of the picture can contrast. Out of banality comes the star-child in 2001; out of banality comes Jack the Ripper in The Shining. Jack is going to return to the elemental from the world of banality. He is going to be like the apes at the beginning of 2001; his tool (the axe) too is going to become a weapon. lf one is prepared for the banality, one can understand its purpose and transcend it. A second quality that the viewer can look for in Kubrick's films is aggression, from the apes in 2001 to Alex in A Clockwork Orange to Jack in The Shining. Jack Torrance can't create (in some ways The Shining is a metaphor for the failed artist) and can't find solace in the conventional releases - sex, liquor, games. He plays ball alone in the hotel as his wife and child wander playfully through the maze of the hedge. But there is no fulfillment in his game. When he writes page after page repeating the same sentence, "No work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," he is unraveling like HAL the computer in 2001 who keeps repeating himself as Dave makes him come apart. There are some tantalizing coincidences/associations between HAL and the characters in The Shining. In particular, it is a happy coincidence that the computer is named HAL in 2001, and the black chef who "shines" in The Shining is named Hallorann (which was Stephen King's characters name in the novel). Both the computer and the chef fail; they both "die" before fulfilling their missions. But both provide crucial transport. A nice Kubrick touch that suggestively underlines the aggression is that Roadrunner cartoons -- those bastions of aggression and Wile E. Coyote's failures -- are on TV in the film. When we first see him near the beginning of The Shining, Danny is watching Roadrunner (in a way he later becomes Roadrunner to Jack's Coyote) as he sits at the table with his mother and eats a sandwich. The TV has a cartoon on in Durkin's garage as Larry tells Hallorann on the phone that he will get him a snowcat to take him to the Overlook Hotel through the storm. And Roadrunner is playing on TV -- we hear the "beep beep" -- as Danny is watching with his mother just before she goes and discovers Jack's manuscript. An odd coincidence is that the photograph on the wall of the hotel at the end of the film showing Jack's visage at the July 4th Ball, 1921, is dated one day after an actual murder occurred in Massachusetts that has some uncanny similarities with the events at the Overlook. On July 3, 1921, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, a man was killed with an ax by his wife, as his daughter took refuge in a hedge. Aggression and its modes are timeless, from apes, to Roadrunner, to Haverhill, to the Overlook. A third quality to look for in a Kubrick film is that objects and/or machines are characters. From the Doomsday machine in Dr. Strangelove, to HAL and the monoliths in 2001, to the Overlook Hotel and the hedge-maze in The Shining, objects have great -- often destructive -- values in Kubrick's films. Sometimes man dismantles machines such as Dave's dismantling of HAL and Jack's taking of the batteries out of the ham radio and snowcat to render them useless. But machines also can be the means of fleeing the past and entering the future, such as the pod that transports Dave into a higher state of life and the snowcat which Hallorann brings that allows Wendy and Danny to escape. The hedge which traps Jack and freezes him in its maze shows what happens when Jack goes deeper and deeper into the maze of his psyche, from which he cannot escape. Perhaps the most difficult thing for the viewer to overcome in a Kubrick film is the human beings. I have already suggested that they are banalities in a banal environment, but the real difficulty is that since the viewer can't relate with the characters he usually fails to see their purpose. This became very apparent in viewers' reactions to Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance. He was accused of everything from being boring to over-acting. But there was definite purpose in his characterization. Nicholson's and Kubrick's Jack Torrance is a combination of banality and absurdity. Most viewers went to The Shining expecting Jack Nicholson to be ballsy and stylish as he was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Instead, as early as the initial interview scene, something seems wrong. The character is ordinary. Nicholson has a chance to be clever, but he isn't. He seems slightly out of synch. And as Jack Torrance becomes more extreme, Nicholson remains out of synch. But Nicholson's performance is not without purpose. Jack Torrance is a man who wants to create and can't. Since he is unable to create, he regresses into himself and gives himself to the hotel and its memories. When Grady the caretaker tells him that his son Danny has "a very great talent [shining]" and that his son "is attempting to use that very talent against your will," Jack becomes the enemy of his son's talent. They match wills. Jack is not the creator/communicator he wants to be; his son is. Nicholson faces a great acting challenge. He changes from the banal would-be writer in the interview to the absurd, impulsive extrovert at the bar to the lively, vicious killer at the end. Nicholson has to change from the ordinary to the elemental. He can't be smooth and stylish. And in not being smooth and stylish, unfortunately he loses many viewers. A final quality a viewer should be aware of is that a Kubrick film is satiric, and often the satire is aimed at America and its values. But so much of the irony is so real that we may not realize Kubrick's tone and approach. Kubrick gives us constant reminders of America in The Shining. The flag is a reminder that he often uses. There is a small American flag on Stuart Ullman's desk in the interview; there is an American flag on the wall when Danny plays darts; there is an American flag in the Park Service; there is an American flag hanging from a pole after Jack's nightmare. Danny wears an Apollo sweater. There is a constant use of the colors red, white, and blue. Television provides American culture. The American culture is a cartoon and a caricature. When Jack is pursuing Wendy to try to kill her, he does a parody of Nixon speaking about the three little pigs. And when he breaks through the bathroom door, he utters the classic television introduction, "Here's Johnny!" The conclusion of The Shining contains an ultimate comment on America. We see a picture on the wall of the Overlook Hotel; it is inscribed "Overlook Hotel; July 4th Ball, 1921" and the smiling visage of Jack Torrance appears in it. In another life, in 1921 post-war America, America was a land of promise. Americans were happy, America's Independence was being celebrated, and Jack was smiling. But in the present, America has lost her values and promise. A smiling, partying Jack Torrance has turned into a madman. His smile is now replaced by a look of frozen emptiness. The party is over. The Shining is a difficult film to fathom. But if we are willing, Kubrick gives us a wealth of material to see and to contemplate. Kubrick's style should be enough to set us on our way. His marvelous tracking shots, his intricate details (e.g., the maze designs), and his color schemes can be tantalizing. With the added awareness that banality, aggression, objects, ordinary characters, and satire often play meaningful parts in a Kubrick film, we should be able to deal with it.

When "Psycho" slashed its way into the American consciousness back in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock famously changed the way Americans consumed their movies. First, in the interest of preserving the movie's "shocking secrets," he insisted theater operators refuse admission to anyone arriving after the film's advertised starting time -- rather than letting them wander in at their leisure halfway through. Also, he produced a series of ads and lobby cards imploring viewers to keep the film's twists under wraps. So how frustrating is it that the Blu-ray packaging for Universal's 50th anniversary release of Hitchcock's spine-tingling masterpiece -- its first high-def home-video release -- goes ahead and spills the beans on one of its biggest secrets? Sure, a huge segment of the American population already knows those secrets, but it might surprise Universal to know that not everybody does -- including a whole new generation of movie-goers who stand to be freaked out by Janet Leigh's trip to the Bates Motel. Fortunately, even if the Universal marketing people don't appreciate the film's history, at least those assembling the contents did. Because the "Psycho 50th Anniversary Edition" -- which hit store shelves Tuesday, just in time for Halloween season -- benefits both from its hi-def visual presentation, as well as a reworked soundtrack in which the original mono mix has been digitally rebuilt for a 5.1 channel surround-sound presentation. As bonus features go, it's a hit-or-miss affair, with most of the best offerings recycled from Universal's 2008 "Psycho: Special Edition" 2-disc DVD set. The best of them: director Laurent Bouzereau's comprehensive, feature-length 1997 documentary "The Making of Psycho"; a newsreel piece on Hitchcock's film; and the delightful six-minute theatrical trailer hosted by Hitch himself (watch it below). Must-sees, all three. Still, given their recycled nature, I'm not sure the 50th anniversary edition elevates itself to absolute must-have status for owners of the 2008 DVD edition. But for those who don't own it, or who just can't resist the lure of seeing that iconic, shower scene in hi-def, it comes close. (Me, I'm one of the latter, and apparently I'm not alone; a California Twitter follower on Tuesday said his local Best Buy was already sold out of "Psycho" Blu-rays.) That's because, as always, the feature film is the thing here, and "Psycho" holds up brilliantly, even as it hits the half-century mark. Not only is it rich with Hitch's head-fakes, misdirections and psych-outs, but there's also Anthony Perkins' brilliantly creepy (and astoundingly non-nominated) portrayal of Norman Bates. Turns out, "Mother" is still crazy after all these years -- and "Psycho" is still crazy-good after all these years, too.