Classic Horror Picks for Halloween
Oct. 30, 2000 -- You want to be scared, don’t you?
A little supernatural sustenance, a touch of haunting horror, a dose of deadly drama. What could be more fun on Halloween than some shivers up your timbers?
For the fright-impaired this week we offer a roster of some of cinema’s finest horror tales. [And visit our slideshow; see interactive at right.] So turn out the lights, lock your doors, curl up under the covers, and use your remote. And remember: If it gets too terrifying, there’s always the “stop” button. Go on. We dare you.
Who Can You Trust?
“Never take candy from strangers” — simple and well-meaning advice on placing too much trust in the unknown, which is advice that characters in horror films rarely take to heart until it’s too late. Sometimes people deemed most trustworthy are actually the ones you have to watch out for, and therein lies a time-honored trait of horror films: the scariest characters are not the gooey, slime-infested creatures from other planets, but the nice guy next door who just happens to have bodies accumulating in his basement.
Robert Mitchum was a consummate player of characters who lived slightly off the edge, whether it was a gumshoe detective or laconic rebels. In The Night of the Hunter, a Gothic tale directed by Charles Laughton, Mitchum plays a murderous preacher on the trail of two children he believes are harboring a bank robber’s loot. A mischievous mixture of wide-eyed, childlike innocence and stark horror, the film is the most riveting portrayal of a psychopath ever.
Alfred Hitchcock claimed that his 1960 film Psycho, shot on a minuscule budget and released with a sensational marketing campaign, was done as a joke, after the seemingly more ambitious Vertigo and North by Northwest.
But Hitchcock showed that high art could come from low material (a morbid tale of a serial killer inspired by Ed Gein), and many consider it his masterpiece. Audiences who followed the events at the Bates Motel doubtless developed a lingering fear of showers, or at least of quietly nervous young men who practice taxidermy.
Many filmmakers make the mistake of thinking horror can only be found among the horrible. Novelist Ira Levin made the inspired decision of setting Rosemary’s Baby, his tale of a woman impregnated by Satan, in a familiar, comfortable apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, inhabited by friendly, doting seniors. After Roman Polanski’s creepy film version, sweet little old ladies — led by Oscar winner Ruth Gordon — will never be viewed the same way.
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