Watchingwell   

             Curated classic films

SCARY MOVIES

      

      Why do we (I mean you) like to scare ourselves at the movies? Is it the ability to trap our fears and anxieties in the rectangle of the screen?  Is it our insatiable appetite for cheap thrills? Whatever.  I have never had the problem. Never voluntarily watched horror or slasher films unless out of boredom when they appeared on TV, and then, I thought them predictable and not scary. I think most would agree that an essential element of scary is surprise, so it can only happen, if it happens at all, in the first viewing.  For example, a rather successful use of surprise to send hearts into arrhythmia, Halloween (1978), a film I saw when it was

old enough to be shown on TV, and I still can’t imagine what kind of suspension of my identity made me watch it, was the first and the best of the deranged-killer-stalking-teenyboppers- slasher genre.  Director, John Carpenter, was astute in his understanding that the anticipation of something terrible holds more terror than the actual event.  With admirable restraint, he shows the killer, Michael Myers, in shadow or in grainy glimpses, but more in the eyes of his victims.  No streams of gore or digitalized special effects, just an ordinary neighborhood, which makes the deranged killer lurking around even more terrifying, juxtaposed against this most normal of settings. For most of the film, I halfway looked away at times, so as not to be jolted when the music tipped me off, but I will admit there was one scene, -- I won’t give it away for those who have yet to see it, but I will say only that I have never again looked at knitting needles without thinking of it.  

    George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968)

was a genuinely creepy film that was ultra-economical in every way, including its actual mayhem, concentrating on the terror of the characters trying to stay alive. What was going to happen inside the house, among the humans added as much to the tension as the zombies outside. For me, it was a film so unlike any horror formula that I didn’t really know what was coming next, or how it would end, and that made it genuinely suspenseful.  It was a groundbreaking film that spawned a whole genre of low-budget, documentary-style horror films.  But there is no suspense in the second viewing, once you know how it ends.

     For similar reasons, Kubrick’s film, The Shining (1980) was so unlike any other that it got pretty scary as it went along, without a clue to the audience as to whether the protagonists would survive.  The location in the snowbound hotel in the Rockies, the interior sets, the score, and the photography conspired brilliantly to create an atmosphere of menace.  As I have written here before (1/4/16 post), the camera leading us down deserted hotel corridors, not knowing what was around each corner, made me afraid. Loosely based

(according to King) on a Steven King story, this Kubrick masterpiece is a beautiful film that challenges our sensibilities to attach beauty to evil. This, you could watch more than once and still be mesmerized.

     The first time I saw the 1931 Dracula with Bela Lugosi, I think I was afraid.  I was a child and director, Tod Browning created an atmosphere of  creepiness with Dwight Frye doing that weird laugh and the ever-elegant Lugosi leaving us with no doubt that he had powers stronger than his adversaries.  But, I’ll share with you the only time I ever really felt uneasy watching a film was when I first saw the German silent vampire classic of F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu (1922). The first screen contains a warning that even to utter the name, N o s f e r a t u, is to be doomed.  I am not susceptible to suggestions of the supernatural, but this gave me a shiver.

     Although this blog is devoted to American classic cinema, a discussion of scary movies for me has to mention German Expressionist Films and the early work of Fritz Lang. His science fiction classic, Metropolis (1927), gave us many ominous special effects, and the original mad scientist.  Lang’s first talking picture, M (1931), is a chilling picture of the worst criminal, a child killer, but we see no violence – only the absence of a child that was there a moment ago.  Peter Lorre stars as the hunted killer and Lang presents him

as so desperate that we feel his terror at the same time we wish for his capture.  

     In 1933, he made The Testament of Dr Mabuse, the evil mastermind who is seemingly able to control his empire after death.  It has some rather remarkable special effects, for its day, and is spookier than many of the modern, evil mastermind films. 

    

    

      For those of you who would never watch a silent film, I urge you to try to watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a masterpiece by Robert Wiene.  Its angular, distorted sets reflecting the distorted minds of the characters, the hypnotist and the somnambulist, are disturbing. Murders are committed, but plot twists make us unsure about the ending.  A true work of art.  Also creepy.