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One sandwich later...
...Spooky movies. Not necessarily all-out-horror, but possibly more subtle...
For me, not all Horror movies are Halloween movies - and not all Halloween movies are Horror movies. The distinction is fuzzy, and not terribly consistent, and is definitely not a good/bad value judgement. The elusive quality of "spooky" is one of the main criteria for a Halloween movie, and often an otherworldly quality. Gore does not necessarily disqualify a movie, but it falls low of the list of desireable elements. Also, my favorite Halloween movies are almost exclusively the older ones, from the 30s through the early 70s - their "scare value" is often depleted, but the element of eerie fantasy remains.
A few to start with:
Carnival of Souls (1962): The original, not the dubious Wes Craven remake. This movie set the standard for atmospheric horror. The actors were unknowns, and the budget was so low as to achieve a kind of flat, grey verisimilitude - those aren't sets, y'know? The soundtrack is Nearly Constant Organ-Playing, with limited dialogue and occasional periods of numb silence. The overall effect is uniquely dislocating and eerie. Synopsis: a young woman walks away from a terrible car accident, and leaves town to try to get on with her life elsewhere. Soon she is haunted by a pale, mysterious stranger and her own growing obsession with an abandoned carnival.
Horror Hotel aka City of the Dead (1960): I got this one on the same DVD as Carnival of Souls. Where CoS gets much of its eerie quality from the stark reality of its setting (gone Somehow Wrong), Horror Hotel creates a wholly-contrived, almost stagey, but very vivid Lost New England Village for us to lose ourselves in - fog-drenched, hoary-gabled houses, boarded-up church and decrepit graveyard, and the shadowy Raven's Inn, presided over by the handsomely sinister Mrs. Newless. Mysterious figures loom out of the fog, strange music seems to rise from the very floorboards, and college student Nan Barlow - sent to Whitewood by her history professor (Christopher Lee!) to investigate the local witchcraft legends - may be over her head... A spooky masterpiece. There's also a great, hilarious moment involving Lee, a bird, and the Worst Timing Ever. You'll know what I'm talking about when you see it.
Another Christopher Lee movie I'm really feeling the love for right now is the similarly-titled Horror Express (1973). This is one of my favorite performances by Lee: he plays Professor Saxton who is, frankly, a pompous horse's ass of an anthropologist, and he plays it to the hilt - arrogant, prim, entitled, but also occasionally very funny and stiffly attractive (he even gets his action-hero on, briefly). Opposite Lee is the great Peter Cushing, a slightly scroundrelly professional rival who is very curious about what, exactly, Professor Saxton is keeping in that locked travel-chest. Then people start dying horribly, and the rest is plot. Most of the movie takes place, as the title would suggest, on a train - the constant clack-clack is terrific, and gives the film a firm sense of presence. The horror elements are effective without being elaborate, and the Science is suitably Mad (circa 1909). No, really, there are some Very Strange Ideas here, but it works. Oh, and Telly Savalas(!) makes a late appearance as "one honest Cossack" - an ambivalent antagonist and all-around sexy beast (check out his underhand throw). Fun movie, eerie, and deliciously lurid. |
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