It's a Horror Classic ! - Part 1

The directorial debut from filmmaker James Wan, this psychological thriller comes from the first screenplay by actor Leigh Whannell, who also stars. Whannell plays Adam, one of two men chained up in a mysterious chamber. The other, Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes), like Adam, has no idea how either of them got there. Neither of them are led to feel optimistic by the man lying between them dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Together, Adam and Dr. Gordon attempt to piece together what has happened to them and who the sadistic madman behind their imprisonment is. Also starring Danny Glover and Monica Potter, Saw premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

A reporter gets more than she bargained for when she tries to prove that a murder has occurred in Brian De Palma's disturbing thriller. Danielle (Margot Kidder) meets Phillip (Lisle Wilson) on a "Peeping Tom"-themed game show and, dodging her ex-husband Emil (William Finley), takes him back to her apartment. But Danielle has a separated Siamese twin sister, Dominique, who is not pleased about the overnight guest. Journalist neighbor Grace (Jennifer Salt) sees Phillip slaughtered by one of them through her window; the body vanishes before she can convince a skeptical detective (Dolph Sweet) to take a look. Determined to prove that she's right (and get a career-advancing story), Grace investigates, assisted by a private eye (Charles Durning), and becomes more involved in the relationships among Danielle, Dominique, and Emil than she ever expected.

Horror auteur Wes Craven followed his threadbare but horrifically compelling cult classic Last House on the Left with this wonderfully demented morality fable about a bloody war of attrition between two extremely different families. The story opens on the journey of the Carters, a mildly dysfunctional extended family led by patriarch "Big Bob" Carter (Russ Grieve), as they travel across the California desert in search of an inherited silver mine. When a broken axle leaves them stranded in the middle of a former nuclear testing site, their attempts to find help lead them unwittingly into the territory of a savage family of cave-dwelling cannibals, the apparent progeny of the bearlike Jupiter (James Whitworth) and an abducted prostitute. Jupiter's eldest son Pluto (professional movie weirdo Michael Berryman) leads the first brutal attack on the defenseless Carters who, through necessity, are driven to equally extreme measures in order to survive. Though the film is not overtly bloody, the scenes depicting this confrontation are rendered with an unflinching directness, and the violations visited on the Carters are so brutal as to make the survivors' regression into savagery all the more convincing. No one is spared from the nightmare: Jupiter's boys have even kidnapped the youngest member of the Carter family -- a mere infant -- to serve as fodder for their next barbecue, and the baby becomes the main point of contention between the rival clans. Craven nevertheless refuses to take the easy way out by depicting his "monsters" as soullessly evil; parallels between either family's "values" are clearly drawn as the differences between the two clans begin to blur.

Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a brilliant medical student who has perfected a green-glowing serum for regenerating life into dead things -- or even parts of dead things. But a corrupt superior, Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), assumes control of West's experiments and winds up, by ghastly necessity, using the stuff on his own severed head and body. West and in-over-his-head co-worker Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) struggle to control the now out-of-control effects of the serum, but the bone-saws and zombies complicate their plans.

Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear provided the director with a box-office success to follow up the critical success of the previous year's Goodfellas. After serving a lengthy prison sentence for a sexual assault, Max Cady (Robert De Niro) comes calling on the man who served as his public defender, Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte). Max begins a campaign of harassment against the man and his family because Bowden buried a report that would have in all likelihood acquitted Cady of the charges against him. Bowden's shaky ethics continue in his personal life as he is considering beginning an extramarital affair with colleague Lori Davis (Illeana Douglas), since he and his wife, Leigh (Jessica Lang) have had a difficult time coming back together since he has admitted to previous indiscretions. Cady infiltrates the family most insidiously by cultivating a relationship with the Bowden's troubled teenage daughter, Danielle (Juliette Lewis), who is all the more susceptible to Cady's advances because of her parents' problems. Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, the stars of the original film, have cameo appearances in this version of Cape Fear. De Niro and Lewis were both nominated for Academy Awards for their work in the film.

Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is a famous author, especially noted for his series of books about a character named Misery Chastain. Paul wants to spread his wings and begin to develop other new story lines and writing styles. His new book Misery's child is just being published and he has already written a new novel not yet published that is based on this change in his writing. While driving through Colorado he has a terrible single car accident when in a raging blizzard. He is severely injured but luckily, or unluckily, he is found and saved by his #1 fan. Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) rescues him and puts him up into her home and is nursing him back to health. What follows is a movie based on a story written by Stephen King that will make your hair stand up. Annie is mentally ill and her infatuation with Paul and the character Misery makes her act out in violent and irrational ways. This movie was portrayed expertly by both James Caan and Kathy Bates. Kathy Bates performance will simply horrify you. I do not want to ever be in a room with that woman alone, she scares me! Ever since this movie was released I think of this character whenever I see her. This is a very good movie and you will simply enjoy it. It is violent and shocking, as are many things based on Stephen King novels, but the storyline and acting is superb. I highly recommend it to you!

A lonely apartment-dweller who was recently abandoned by his longtime girlfriend finds his sanity slipping as his friendship with the two mysterious women next door takes a seductively sinister turn in director Pål Sletaune's dark tale of obsession and paranoia. When John's girlfriend walks out on him, he soon begins to form a neighborly friendship with the two women who live in the cluttered apartment next door. That friendship soon takes an ominous turn, however, when one of the women seduces John with a punishing blow to the jaw that sends a series of disturbing repressed memories flooding back into the confused man's swimming head. As John begins to fall into his feral seducer's sadistic trap, gradually finds himself questioning the strange reality that seems to have swallowed him body and soul.

This remake of the 1956 horror classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers moves the action from small-town USA to 1970s San Francisco and replaces at least part of the original's psychological horror with special effects. Spores rain forth, unseen, from outer space, and soon strange flowers begin popping up all over the city. After bringing one of these hybrid specimens home with her one night, biologist Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) notices that her live-in boyfriend, Geoffrey (Art Hindle), doesn't seem like himself; he's cold and distant and somehow just not quite there. When she turns to her friend Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), a colleague at the Department of Public Health, he convinces her to see his friend Dr. Kibner (Leonard Nimoy), a pop psychologist who argues that the problem is all in Elizabeth's head. Soon, though, Matthew and Elizabeth begin to notice that people all over the city are changing subtly and inexplicably. When their friend Jack Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum) and his wife Nancy (Veronica Cartwright) find a lifeless, half-formed doppelganger covered with plant fibers in the mud baths they own and operate, the group of friends finally begins to understand that a sinister transformation is sweeping their city. Kevin McCarthy and Don Siegel, respectively the star and director of the original film, have small roles in the new version, as does an unbilled Robert Duvall.

Anne Rice's best-selling romantic horror tale about the origins of a centuries-old vampire inspired this popular, atmospheric chiller. One of director Neil Jordan's major Hollywood productions, the film stays close to its source material, retaining the frame of a young reporter (Christian Slater) interviewing a man who claims to be a 200-year-old vampire. The man, Louis (Brad Pitt), shares his story, beginning in 18th-century New Orleans with his first encounters with the charismatic and decadent vampire Lestat (Tom Cruise). Lestat converts Louis to blood-sucking and immortality, but Louis fails to adopt Lestat's cavalier attitude, instead tormenting himself with guilt over his new nature. The two vampires remain deeply, if reluctantly, connected over the years, while becoming intimately involved with others of their kind, including Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), a mature immortal in a young child's body. Fans of the novel raised numerous objections, particularly after Rice initially spoke out against the casting of Cruise as Lestat; further casting difficulties followed the death of River Phoenix, whose role as the interviewer was assumed by Christian Slater. Rice later recanted her objections, and the combination of thrills and gothic romance proved popular with audiences.

Company of Wolves is Little Red Riding Hood for the Alien generation. Sheltered 13-year-old Sarah Patterson, living on the edge of a foreboding woods, is visited by her grandmother Angela Lansbury. The old lady delights in telling Sarah the most horrific stories, usually involving what happens to little girls if they trust wolves--the actual, rather than symbolic kind. Later on, Sarah sets out through the woods to visit her grandmother. She makes the acquaintance of a seductive young huntsman (Micha Bergese), who turns out to be.....well, what big teeth he's got. The ads for Company of Wolves, showing a wolf springing from the open mouth of poor little Sarah Patterson, were warning enough for the faint of heart. Actually, the horror is secondary to the remarkable Grimm's-Fairy-Tale ambience which the film successfully sustains from beginning to end. And, in keeping with the original unexpurgated versions of most fairy tales, the sexual subtext is never far from the surface. Director Neil Jordan would further develop some of the subliminal themes in Company of Wolves in his 1994 production Interview with the Vampire.

This high-octane semi-sequel to Sam Raimi's cult hit The Evil Dead has nearly eclipsed its predecessor's reputation thanks to an endless barrage of hyperkinetic camera acrobatics, rapid-fire editing and "splatstick" gore effects ... not to mention a truly goofy performance by Bruce Campbell. Nearly the entire storyline of the previous film has been re-shot and presented in a drastically condensed form within the first few minutes: rock-jawed but clueless "hero" Ash (Campbell) now visits the mountain cabin only with girlfriend Linda (played here by Denise Bixler). Upon arrival at the cabin, Ash discovers the Sumerian Book of the Dead, the ritual dagger and a reel-to-reel tape containing the professor's translations of the book's hieroglyphics. The incantations summon an unseen, growling spirit from within the woods, which bursts into the cabin and takes possession of Linda's soul. Ash is forced to decapitate her with a shovel, after which he buries her in the forest. At first dawn, Ash tries to make his escape, but is promptly set upon by the spirits, given a solid thrashing and nearly possessed himself, saved only by the arrival of sunlight. Cut off from the outside world, Ash is forced to hole up in the cabin and wait for the next demonic onslaught -- which arrives sooner than expected, led by Linda's rotting corpse. After being bitten by Linda's chatty decapitated head, Ash's hand becomes independent of his body and begins pummeling him repeatedly. The story then jumps to a local airport, where the professor's daughter Annie (Sarah Berry) and her partner Ed Getley (Richard Domeier) have just arrived with the missing pages to the Necronomicon. They employ a cranky pair of local rednecks, Jake (Dan Hicks) and Bobbie Joe (Kassie Wesley), as guides to lead them through the dense woods to the cabin ... where, at that very moment, Ash is removing his belligerent hand with a chainsaw, creating yet another ambulatory foe. Driven to the brink of insanity, Ash fires blindly at a noise outside, unaware that the new arrivals are Annie and company. Bobbie Joe is injured by the gunshot, which incurs the wrath of Jake, who knocks Ash senseless and locks him in the fruit cellar. Believing her father was murdered by Ash, Annie plays the rest of the professor's recording to learn the truth, and discovers her possessed mother was buried in the same cellar -- and not exactly resting in peace. This touches off a string of unbelievably gruesome (and hysterically funny) events, including Henrietta's transformation into a stop-motion creature (reminiscent of a Ray Harryhausen creation), Ed's sudden metamorphosis into a toothy, levitating ghoul, and Ash's climactic confrontation with the forest demon itself. The obvious glee with which Raimi and company present this cavalcade of slime-drenched monstrosities and Three Stooges pratfalls makes it impossible to take seriously as a horror film, but Evil Dead 2 is nevertheless essential viewing among connoisseurs of truly demented cinema. The film's sardonic coda opened the way for a slightly less successful sequel, Army of Darkness.

Set in feudal Japan, this atmospheric and violent ghost story (whose title literally translates as The Black Cat in the Bush) begins with the brutal murder of two women by a band of mercenary samurai, whose leader is subsequently tracked down, seduced, and murdered by a young woman possessed by the shape-shifting specter of his victim. Called upon to avenge the warrior's death is none other than the woman's former husband, who has been ordered by his superiors to assassinate the guilty party. Plot twists abound as the older, vengeful spirit seeks to exact poetic justice despite the younger ghost's reluctance to destroy the man who once loved her. Though not on the epic level of Kwaidan or Onibaba, this adaptation of an ancient folk tale benefits from the same cultural richness, as well as a touch of social allegory.

A remake of Roger Corman's 1964 adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe tale was produced by Corman but directed by Larry Brand. Its the story of a medieval prince (Adrian Paul) and his attempt to avoid a vicious plague among the populace.

Though the title makes Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer seem like a cut-rate slasher flick, the film is actually one of the most disturbing and terrifying examinations of mass murderers ever filmed. Loosely based on the story of confessed murderer Henry Lee Lucas, the film follows Henry (Michael Rooker) as he selects innocent victims--occasionally with his roommate Otis (Tom Towles)--and kills them, capturing their murder on videotape. Many of these murders rank among the most brutal and violent ever portrayed on film. The violence and the clinical, detached portrayal of Henry and his horrifying actions make Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer a disturbing, thought-provoking film, but it certainly isn't one for every taste. Finished in 1986, the film wasn't released until 1990, when it was greeted with both positive reviews and considerable controversy.

The time is the 1950s: seedy Brooklyn private eye Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) is hired by shady Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) to locate a pop singer who reneged on a debt. Harry ventures into Harlem, the first step of a Heart of Darkness-inspired odyssey. Each time Harry makes contact with someone who might know the singer's whereabouts, he or she is killed in a horrible, ritualistic fashion; a Satanic cult seems to be at the bottom of all the carnage. Harry solves the mystery, all right. He just didn't know that he had the answer all along -- even before Louis entered his office. Also available in the "unrated" video version, Angel Heart is best known as the film that nearly got an X-rating due to a no-holds-barred sex scene involving Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet.

One of Brian De Palma's most divisive films, Dressed to Kill is a spine-chilling Alfred Hitchcock update for the late 1970s. Sexually frustrated wife and mother Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) visits her New York psychiatrist, Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine), to complain about her unfulfilling erotic life. When she then goes to meet her husband at a museum, she meets an anonymous man whom she follows out to a cab. After an afternoon of satisfying sex, Kate discovers that the man has a venereal disease, but that information becomes a moot point when a razor-wielding blonde woman slashes Kate to ribbons in the elevator of the man's building. Blonde prostitute Liz (Nancy Allen), who caught a glimpse of the murderer, becomes both the prime suspect and the killer's next target. With the police less than willing to believe her story, Liz joins forces with Kate's son Peter (Keith Gordon) to get the psychopath themselves.

As a child, Baby Jane Hudson was the toast of vaudeville. As an adult, however, Baby Jane was overshadowed by her more talented sister, Blanche, who became a top movie star. Then, one night in the early '30s, came the accident, which crippled Blanche for life and which was blamed on a drunken, jealous Jane. Flash-forward to 1962: Jane (Bette Davis), decked out in garish chalk-white makeup, still lives with the invalid Blanche (Joan Crawford) in their decaying L.A. mansion. When Jane isn't tormenting the helpless Blanche by serving her dead rats for breakfast, she is plotting and planning her showbiz comeback. Convinced that her days are numbered if she remains in the house with her addlepated sister, Blanche desperately tries to get away, but all avenues of escape are cut off by the deranged Jane. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? sparked a trend toward casting venerable Hollywood female stars in such grotesque Grand Guignol melodramas as Lady in a Cage (1964) and Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte (1965). In addition to revitalizing the careers of Davis and Crawford, whose real-life mutual animosity came through loud and clear, the film made a star of sorts of 24-year-old character actor Victor Buono, cast as a porcine mama's-boy musical composer. Lukas Heller's screenplay was based on the novel by Henry Farrell.

Based on Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel, this film from Francis Ford Coppola and screenwriter James Victor Hart offers a full-blooded portrait of the immortal Transylvanian vampire. The major departure from Stoker is one of motivation as Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) is motivated more by romance than by bloodlust. He punctures the necks as a means of avenging the death of his wife in the 15th century, and when he comes to London, it is specifically to meet heroine Mina Harker (Winona Ryder), the living image of his late wife (Ryder plays a dual role, as do several of her costars). Anthony Hopkins is obsessed vampire hunter Van Helsing, while Keanu Reeves takes on the role of Jonathan Harker, and Tom Waits plays bug-eating Renfield. Bram Stoker's Dracula was the winner of three Academy Awards.

One of the longest-running horror film series began with this gory shocker from director Sean S. Cunningham, who had previously produced Wes Craven's classic Last House on the Left. Entrepreneur Steve Christie (Peter Brouwer) re-opens Camp Crystal Lake after many years during which it has been cursed by murders and bad luck. The young and nubile counselors all begin to die extremely bloody deaths at the hands of an unseen killer during a rainstorm which isolates the camp. A woman is chopped in the face with an axe, another has her throat sliced in amazingly gruesome fashion, a male counselor (Harry Crosby) is pinned to a door with arrows, and a young Kevin Bacon has an arrow shoved through his throat from below a bed. Victor Miller's script is not particularly impressive, but Cunningham's tense direction, and some remarkable special-effects by acclaimed makeup artist Tom Savini are enough to make it worthwhile. 1950s quiz show regular Betsy Palmer appears as the cook whose son, Jason (Ari Lehman), drowned 25 years earlier while neglected by romancing counselors. Palmer was reportedly cast because she was willing to drive her own car to and from the set. Trivia buffs should note the decapitation scene near the end, in which the female killer exhibits rather hirsute hands clutching at the air. The hands belong to Savini's assistant, Taso N. Stavrakis. Friday the 13th made over 20 million dollars at the box office and spawned numerous sequels.

This simplified (but lavish) remake of the 1933 melodrama The Mystery of the Wax Museum was the most financially successful 3-D production of the 1950s. In his first full-fledged "horror" role, Vincent Price plays Prof. Henry Jarrod, the owner of a wax museum, whose partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts), intends to burn the place down for the insurance money. When Jarrod tries to prevent Burke from torching the museum, he himself is trapped in the conflagration. Years pass: though now confined to a wheelchair, Jarrod manages to open up a new museum in New York, boasting the most incredibly lifelike wax statues ever seen. At the same time, a masked prowler has been stalking the city, murdering people and then stealing their bodies from the mortuary. One of the victims is Jarrod's old nemesis Burke; another is Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones), the roommate of art student Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk). On a visit to the wax museum, Sue can't help but notice that the wax likeness of Joan of Arc is a dead ringer for her deceased friend Cathy -- while the courtly Jarrod declares joyously that Sue is the living image of Marie Antoinette. Guess where this is going to wind up? Frank Lovejoy and Paul Picerni co-star as the nominal heroes, while Charles Bronson -- still billed as Charles Buchinsky -- is a menacing presence as Jarrod's deaf-mute chief sculptor (appropriately named "Igor"). No opportunity to show off the 3-D process is wasted during House of Wax; the most memorable stereoscopic moments are provided by garrulous "paddle-ball man" Reggie Rymal. Ironically, Andre De Toth, the film's director, had only one good eye, and had to constantly ask his cast and crew if the various 3-D effects had come off properly.

The Devils was the Ken Russell film version of the controversial play by John Whiting. The story, based on Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, concerns controversial 17th century French priest Urbain Grandier, whose radical political and religious notions and profligate sex life earn him many enemies. When a group of nuns appears to have been "bewitched" by Grandier, his rivals feed on the resulting mass hysteria, using this incident as an excuse to have the priest arrested. Refusing to confess to being in league with Satan and to renounce his "heretical" views, Grandier undergoes appalling tortures, and is finally burned at the stake. Vanessa Redgrave co-stars as the head nun. Due to censorship issues in virtually every country in which The Devils has been released, running times vary greatly.

A drag race turns to tragedy when one car, with three young women inside, topples over a bridge and into the muddy river below. The authorities drag the river, but the search is fruitless and the girls are presumed dead until a single survivor stumbles out of the water with no recollection of how she escaped. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) decides to forget her strange experience and carry on with her plan to move to Utah to accept a job as a church organist. She rejects the notion that because her profession leads her to work in the church, she is obligated to worship as part of the congregation, and this cold approach to her work unnerves many around her. While driving to the new city, she experiences weird visions of a ghoulish man who stares at her through the windshield, and passes an abandoned carnival on a desolate stretch of highway outside of town to which she feels strangely drawn. Mary tries to live her life in private, ignoring invitations to worship by the minister of her church and the leering propositions of a neighbor in her rooming house. Soon the ghostly apparition from the highway is appearing more often, and she experiences eerie spells in which she becomes invisible to people on the street. A doctor tries to help, but he too is rejected, and eventually Mary realizes that the deserted carnival holds the secret to her destiny.

Can evil be inherited? That's the question posed by Maxwell Anderson in his stage play The Bad Seed. This 1956 film adaptation stars many actors from the Broadway version, including Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones and Eileen Heckart. Young McCormack plays Rhoda, a too-good-to-be-true grade schooler who occasionally exhibits a vicious streak whenever things don't turn out her way. During a picnic, one of Rhoda's schoolmates is drowned; the victim is a boy who'd won a penmanship medal that Rhoda had coveted. Nancy Kelly, the girl's mother, slowly comes to the horrible conclusion that Rhoda was responsible for the boy's death--a suspicion fueled by the discovery that Kelly, who was adopted as an infant, is the daughter of a convicted murderess. Meanwhile, a moronic handyman (Henry Jones) accidentally tumbles to Rhoda's secret, whereupon he is "accidentally" burned to death. Realizing that Rhoda must be stopped before she can kill again, and reasoning that the authorities would never believe the truth, Kelly tries to put the girl to sleep permanently with barbituates, then shoots herself. The play's ironic ending--the mother dies, while the unsuspected Rhoda lives on--is sacrificed for a "divine retribution" finale in the film, with Rhoda being punished by a convenient bolt of lightning. This alteration is acceptable, but director Mervin Leroy further gilds the lily with an asinine closing-credits sequence wherein Nancy Kelly throws Patty McCormack over her knee and administers a spanking! The 1985 TV movie remake of The Bad Seed retains the play's original ending, but all in all is not half as entertaining as the 1956 version (its hokey denouement notwithstanding). McCormack later starred in Max Allan Collins' unofficial 1995 sequel Mommy.

Something is seriously amiss in the tiny British village of Midwich. At 11 a.m. one morning, every village resident suddenly falls asleep -- and then, just as suddenly, everyone wakes up, completely unaffected by the phenomenon. Well, not completely: virtually every woman of childbearing years has become pregnant. All the babies are born on the same night, at precisely the same moment. All look the same, weigh the same, and even have the same curious cross-hatched hair and underdeveloped fingernails. Four years later, the children have all prematurely reached the age of nine or so -- and all behave in a weird, conspiratorial manner, comporting themselves more like adults than kids. Resident scientist George Sanders, one of the fathers, surmises that the bizarre manner of the children -- from their zombie-like movements to their cold, staring eyes -- is the result of radioactivity, possibly extraterrestrial in nature. One thing is certain: the children possess powers far beyond those of ordinary mortals. And they must be stopped. One of the most influential science fiction films of the 1960s, Village of the Damned was based on the equally eerie John Wyndham novel The Midwich Cuckoos. The more explicit 1995 remake was widely panned in comparison.

Based on the classic novel by mystery author Agatha Christie that was later adapted as the Broadway hit Ten Little Indians , And Then There Were None begins with ten characters, each with a skeleton in his or her closet, on a remote island off the English coast. They soon realize that they have been brought there by an insane judge, who has tried each of them for criminal behavior in the past, and who now feels it is his duty to render proper justice for each. The struggle to stay alive begins as each "guest" is eliminated in a fashion that corresponds to the titular nursery rhyme. Walter Huston, Louis Hayward, and C. Aubrey Smith are among those marked for death. The film's ending differs from that of the novel, and later remakes in 1966, 1975, and 1989 (all using the title Ten Little Indians), alternated between Christie's original finale and this film's climax. Depending on one's taste, the film's pacing is either excruciatingly slow or suspenseful, but the storyline has become a cinematic staple in everything from horror (Theatre Of Blood) to satire (Murder By Death).