SCREAM! 10 overlooked flicks to add a shriek to your Halloween
By JAMES REED, Standard-Times correspondent
A good horror film can transform us like few other genres can. It can turn everyone from grown men and women to children into bug-eyed messes, curled up on couches and wondering if we should flip on the lights. Suddenly, creaks in floors and even our own shadows become full-sensory assaults.
But a brilliant scary movie can force us to question the everyday business of life. (And we're not just talking about Madonna's performance in "Swept Away," either.) Didn't Hitchcock's "Psycho" make taking a shower an exercise in anxiety?
Yes it did, says Charles White, an English professor at UMass Dartmouth who specializes in film criticism. Mr. White says the horror genre often gets under our skin by playing on our fears of the unknown.
"In most horror films, there has to be an element of the supernatural or the truly terrifying," he says. "I don't think the definition (of horror) is hard and fast."
The trick, though, is finding a film that holds up over the years. Arguably, the Frankenstein that spooked audiences in 1931 seems absurd to many of us now, laughable where it should be frightful.
"Horror movies are a very contemporary art form," Mr. White says, "but every generation has its fill of them because they're good sellers. They're exciting and they get the heart pumping, and most people's lives aren't that exciting."
When we wanted to know what gives you the willies, an informal poll of SouthCoast film mavens and academics revealed that many of you could barely sleep after watching "The Exorcist," "Silence of the Lambs," "Psycho," "Halloween," "Cujo," or even a concoction as bizarre as David Lynch's "Eraserhead."
For a different list of modern scary movies on video, we asked these same sources to go beyond the classics and recommend overlooked, if occasionally over-the-top, gems to add some terror to your Halloween.
(Note: These are not not NOT for children or the faint of heart.)
So pop some popcorn, get comfy on the couch, and oh yeah, leave the lights on.
1) Repulsion (UK, 1965). Before Roman Polanski paralyzed us with "Rosemary's Baby," he turned his attentions to a young woman's seemingly irrational spiral into insanity. From the film's opening credits featured in a close-up of a blinking eye, we know we're in for a too-close-for-comfort account of what can happen if left to our own devices. A stunning, as always, Catherine Deneuve plays Carol, who spends the weekend alone in her sister's apartment and soon succumbs to the very tenets of good horror films -- faint sounds in an empty room, crazed hallucinations of what could happen to her. We don't know why she's going mad, but she compels us to tag along.
2) John Carpenter's The Fog (USA, 1980). An obvious pick for the SouthCoast, this is the tale of an inexplicable fog that rolls into a coastal community and brings with it centuries of dead fishermen who hack the townspeople to death with machetes. Mr. Carpenter was a pioneer of the slasher genre, and this is a choice, um, slice of his work.
3) Don't Look Now (UK-Italy, 1973). The despondency of losing a loved one and its consequences are the focuses of this '70s classic starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. When the Baxters' daughter drowns, they travel to Venice and are haunted by harrowing visions of their dead child slogging the streets. A psychic tells them that the daughter is trying to communicate with them, which naturally prolongs their sorrow internally. Notable for its emphasis on stark images, one particular love scene and a shattering ending.
4) Let's Scare Jessica to Death (USA, 1971). Poor Jessica. All she wanted was a little quiet time in the country, after a recent stay in a mental hospital, but instead she finds a bucolic Connecticut estate that has become a hunting ground full of vampires, tractors gone haywire and hostile neighbors. Or is it all in her head? You decide.
5) Copycat (USA, 1995). The mere idea of casting dreamy jazz crooner Harry Connick Jr. as a villain is pretty scary, but making him a relentless serial killer is pure hell. A retired psychologist (Sigourney Weaver in a delicious role) reluctantly agrees to track down a copycat serial killer, but soon finds herself the object of his affection. Did we mention Harry Connick is missing a few front teeth? Oh, the horror!
6) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? ( USA, 1962). It's hard to tell what's more terrorizing: aging legend Bette Davis' garish makeup and song-and-dance to "I've Written a Letter to Daddy" or the movie's plot of two rival actress sisters holed up in a crumbling mansion. A borderline camp classic if not for the desperation that underpins their relationship, not to mention the iconic ending on the beach. Tasty bird entrees for lunch and the tangible animosity between the actresses in real life made this prime fodder for the tabloids, plus a more believable horror film for the audience.
7) Suspiria (Italy, 1977). Italian maestro Dario Argento's highly stylized take on the secrets of a ballet school is so bad it's good. A young American student arrives at her new dance school in Germany and is met with hellacious weather, two grisly murders and catty fellow ballerinas. And that's just the first night. Scenes of people tangled up in razor wire and a soundtrack as overwrought as anything Yoko Ono ever recorded make this one hard to watch ... and not to watch as well.
8) The Changeling (Canada, 1980). Fans of haunted-house movies surely will squirm as they witness one man's tragedy compounded by the mystery that enshrouds his new home. George C. Scott is terrific as John Russell, a music professor whose family has been killed in a road accident. When he moves into an abandoned mansion to grieve, he realizes he is not the house's only resident. Puts a psychological spin on the idea of haunted houses and makes tossing a ball into the darkness downright eerie.
9) Peeping Tom (UK, 1970). Forget Robin Williams' creepy turn in this year's "One-Hour Photo." This British import follows the path of a young man who murders women for the sole purpose of videotaping their final expressions of death. Much like "Psycho," it shows us that true horror is not the stuff of chain saws and gore but rather the placidity that can mask the yearnings of a deeply disturbed person.
10) Thesis (Spain, 1995). From the director who gave us "The Others" comes the story of a young woman who's writing her graduate thesis on snuff films, only to stumble upon a movie of an actual student being murdered at the school. Unsettling scenes in a college library and shifting sympathies for the characters make this a must-see, especially if you're a student. In Spanish with subtitles.
This story appeared on Page B1 of The Standard-Times on October 28, 2002.
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