My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: Martin

Martin
Dir: George A. Romero. Starring John Amplas, Lincoln Maazelm, Christine Forrest, and Tom Savini. 1976

I love Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, but with Martin, the filmmaker left the undead to concentrate on a single sad, solitary psychosexual, and delivered what is, for me, his finest flick. Martin is a post-teenage blood fiend who is sent to live with relatives in industrial Pittsburgh. It’s there that the battle between folkloric horror and mental illness is fought, aided by outstanding effects from Tom Savini, who also acts in the film. This contemporary take on an ages-old monster (the vampire) works as smoothly as Romero’s updating of the zombie, and serves to (sympathetically?) advance the modern concept of the human monster among us as Hitchcock did with Psycho.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: King Kong

King Kong
Dirs: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. Starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, and Bruce Cabot. 1933

King Kong, the movie, is legendary. Beautifully conceived, cast, directed, photographed and animated, it stands as one of cinema’s great works of imagination. And that’s to say nothing of Kong the creature, a raging beast. He’s frightening in his single mindedness and disregard for anyone and everything around him. Twice separated from his object of what… lust? love? curiosity? – Kong stomps, chews, tears, and climbs his way through Skull Island and New York City, leaving a trail of destruction behind him that is cleverly addressed in the follow up, Song of Kong. Twice remade but never matched, King Kong has earned its title as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: Jaws

Jaws
Dir: Steven Spielberg. Starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, and Murray Hamilton. 1975

This movie still makes me nervous when I’m waist-deep in water. That’s because Jaws successfully exploits our fear of the unknown, a fear that can easily be transferred from murky water to dry land. Its simple plot, aped in countless slasher flicks – shark terrorizes holiday community – is given depth by adding interesting characters and exploring the theme of overcoming fear. For my money, Spielberg has never achieved this level of pure moviemaking again, not with Raiders of the Lost Ark and not with Jurassic Park. Here, he creates scenes that exist only to scare, and he succeeds with the help of John Williams' Psycho-at-Sea score and Verna Fields' spot-on editing.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Dir: Don Siegel. Starring Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan, and Carolyn Jones. 1956

This, the original film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, is a taut and tight horror flick that peddles that most 1950’s of flavours – paranoia. Beneath all the speculation about whether its theme is anti-McCarthyism or anti-Communism lies a stone cold tale about losing our humanity. In fact, the scene I find the most effective is the one that shows exactly what is lost when you become incorporated. SPOILER: Hiding while being pursued by pod people, Miles kisses Becky and receives nothing back but a cold stare. END SPOILER. It’s at this moment when Body Snatchers' humanity really comes across for me. When a nudge to maintain our individuality, emotion, and free thought is this entertaining, how can you refuse? As for the much lamented bookend scenes imposed by the studio, I do my best to ignore them, and just mentally fade out with the original ending as intended.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: Hands of the Ripper

Hands of the Ripper
Dir: Peter Sasdy. Starring Eric Porter, Angharad Rees, Jane Merrow, and Keith Bell. 1971

Hands of the Ripper takes everything I love about Hammer Horror (but for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee), and presents them in one glorious picture – The gothic atmosphere, the crimson, the contemporary twist on a well-known tale, the monster waiting to strike, the innocent heroine... The difference being that here, the monster waiting to strike is the innocent heroine. Never before has there been a Hammer heroine with more pathos than Anna, daughter of Jack the Ripper, whose own murderous rage is unknowingly unleashed when a perfect storm of circumstance occurs. Our hero, Dr. Pritchard, is closer to filling the role of villain as he enables Anna to commit her crimes due to his fascination with her psychiatric condition. It’s this grey area, set against a backdrop of Victorian England, séances and murder, that draws me to Hands of the Ripper time and time again, standing as Hammers’ greatest Freudian take on the gothic.

I'd previously written about Hands of the Ripper in My Hammer Horror Dilemma. Click here to read it.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: Halloween

Halloween
Dir: John Carpenter. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Nancy Kyes, and P.J. Soles. 1978

Written about ad nauseam, Halloween is a superb horror flick that is lovingly crafted and delivers on its scare promise. Carpenter is adept at creating tightly knit worlds that make sense in and of themselves, that focus on straightforward plots supporting characters that are knowable, and situations, no mater how outlandish, that we can relate to. He was aided, in no small part, by excellent support and co-writing from producer Debra Hill. Halloween is, in fact, an instance of all departments working at their peak. It makes our job as an audience, to sit back and enjoy, easy. From that perspective, it seems impossible to watch Halloween without wanting to yell advice to Laurie Strode, the world’s most famous final girl.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: The Fog

The Fog
Dir: John Carpenter. Starring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, Janet Leigh, Hal Holbrook, Nancy Kyes, and John Houseman. 1980

Imagine trying to follow Halloween. The pressure must have been immense, but in hindsight Halloween director John Carpenter succeeded with The Fog, a film that has gained in reputation in the years since its release. The opening with John Houseman telling kids (and the audience) the film’s backstory as they sit around a campfire sets the tone for what’s to come, but it’s the following sequence that seals the deal for me. In the dead of night, as its centennial dawns, things go haywire in the town of Antonio Bay. Bottles fall and shatter, gas pumps jump out of their cradles, car horns begin honking, and phones start ringing. It’s a truly creepy compilation of sound and image that warns of things to come. This sense of impending dread helps to make The Fog stand out against its classic ghost storytelling format – spectres appear to right a wrong – as do its abundant atmosphere, suspense, and the unusual characters with which Carpenter has populated the town. Of all my favourite horror films, this one may be (to paraphrase the Creepshow poster) the most fun I’ve had being scared.