After three months of lackluster and expensive summer blockbusters, it's now fall, and audiences must gear up for something even worse: Hollywood horror films.
But if movies filled with blood-spattered corpses and violent string sections on the soundtrack fail to rouse you even one bit, you're not alone; fortunately, there are some classic and overlooked alternatives that aren't necessarily horrific, but creepy, disturbing, and very well made. After all, as an audience we expect a good story, direction, cinematography, and acting, so why should we settle for less when it comes to getting our thrills?
1. "Nosferatu" (Murnau, 1922)
Nosferatu is the Dracula story, but under a different name due to legal disputes with Bram Stoker's widow. Here, we have Count Orlok, a ghastly, wide-eyed predator who is ready to feast upon fresh blood and can only die if distracted until sunrise by a virginal young woman. The film is not necessarily frightening, but does have its tense moments due to Murnau's use of montage.
And whereas today's horror flicks are concerned with someone jumping out from the corner of the screen ever five seconds, Murnau knows the value of building suspense and making us wait. There may not be a thrill a minute, but its coupling of youthful sexuality and ghastly violence adds a terror that no amount of blood could equal.
2."Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (Siegel, 1956)
Disregarding the misleading studio-enforced title and the mandatory prologue and epilogue that the studio put in place to assure audiences that the apocalypse isn't imminent, this is a multilevel classic film. It's about a doctor, Miles Bennel (Kevin McCarthy), who learns that the people of his town are being replaced by zombies born from large pods harvested in nearby farms and greenhouses. The plot is simple, the budget is cheap, but the pace and increasingly frantic energy and suspense are haunting and engrossing. On another level, the film asks what is wrong with these lifeless, emotionally indifferent zombies as long as they look and act the same. Isn't that what people in our complacent society have become? It's a message directed at us today, but was especially geared toward those living in the immediate post-McCarthy era.
3. "Peeping Tom" (Powell,1960)
Although despised upon its initial release and single-handedly ending the formative career of Michael Powell, "Peeping Tom" is now regarded as a masterpiece. It is a disturbing look at a scopophiliac named Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Bohm), who was abused as a child by being constantly experimented with and filmed by his father's movie camera.
Now, Mark makes documentaries of himself killing women with a knife attached to one leg of his tripod. Bohm's performance is chilling, the direction, cinematography, and art direction are masterful, and it all fits together to make one unsettling picture. This is due mainly to the fact that Mark's scopophilia hits right at the heart of the voyeurism that is the essence of moviegoing.
4. "The Night of the Hunter" (Laughton, 1955)
"The Night of the Hunter" is one of the creepiest movies ever made. There's just something about a fundamentalist preacher (Robert Mitchum) singing hymns while terrorizing two young children that that is immensely disturbing. Mitchum does an amazing job of combining the sacred and profane by portraying a man of both faith and murder.
He views sex as an abomination even within marriage, but "killin' ain't so bad," because there's lots of it in the Bible.
When the film opened, it was a huge failure, and Laughton never again directed a film. It's not difficult to see why this film did not go over too well with audiences of 1955. But amazingly, none of the movie's elements are outdated today. Both Roger Ebert and David Thomson consider it one of America's great cinematic achievements.
5. "M" (Lang, 1931)
Director Fritz Lang's first talkie is also the first film in the serial killer genre. A young Peter Lorre plays a killer who preys on young girls by luring them with balloons, candy, and his whistling. The residents of the city are so paranoid that you can't even talk to a child without becoming a suspect. And with all the extra cops patrolling, the city's criminal bosses get fed up and decide to take matters into their own hands.
The film's direction, editing, cinematography, and its use of montage all work together to make an atmospheric and suggestive film; though we never see just what Lorre does to the girls, the movement of his mouth and the twitching of his face give us all the information we need. Very grim by even today's standards, "M" will haunt you long after it ends.
