It took over five years and the tapping of every resource for David Lynch to fund his first feature-length film. The results of this painstaking process are obvious; the film is resonant in its visual renderings. Set in the decay of a post-industrial wasteland, Eraserhead delves into Read More …
Ridley Scott’s 1979 science fiction nightmare still terrifies audiences even though its sequels have lacked its chillingly intelligent design. The aliens, attacking from without and within, frighten us with the prospect that we might be carrying the cosmos’ most destructive force within us. Worse, the Read More …
The romantic entanglements of circus performers and the darkness of the human heart drive this bizarre film. While the mere thought of working with a cast of real-life sideshow performers appalled many moviegoers, director Tod Browning further shocked audiences by giving the freaks common human Read More …
Director James Whale’s sequel deepens the philosophy as well as the terror established in Frankenstein (1931). When the monster learns language and compassion from a kindly blind man, its need for companionship is also awakened, leading the monster to confront its creator. Boris Karloff and many of Read More …
Although they are both based on the same Shirley Jackson novel about a group of people investigating the supernatural in an eerie old mansion, don’t mistake Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963) for the 1999 Jan De Bont film, The Haunting. Where De Bont piles on the special effects Read More …
One of several well-regarded collaborations between director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton, I Walked With a Zombie follows a nurse as she moves to the Caribbean to care for a plantation owner’s strangely afflicted wife. Tourneur uses shadows and detached narration to create an indelible mood, Read More …
John Carpenter’s gruesome adaptation of John W. Campbell’s novella Who Goes There? concerns an Antarctic research station invaded by an alien organism, which could possibly replicate all life on earth in three years. Before attempting to destroy the creature, the ten-man research team must first confront their Read More …
In The Shining, a father, a mother, and a son spend the winter as caretakers of a remote, isolated hotel, only to find themselves lost in a nightmare of psychic horror. Stanley Kubrick’s film makes the most of atmosphere; the fictional Overlook Hotel makes as much Read More …
Voyeurism lies at the heart of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, a taut horror thriller about a disturbed young cameraman who murders women and films them as they die. Powell brings a craftsman’s eye to the film, which he sets in mostly tight, claustrophobic spaces. Terrifying, thought-provoking, Read More …
A masterpiece that transcends the boundaries of time, Frankenstein was described by author Mary Shelley as “a moral lesson of the punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate God.” The horror of a scientist’s creation, or rather re-creation, raises all sorts of ethical questions Read More …