Horror Cinema Countdown:
Ten Haunting Images I'll Take to My Grave
Introduction:
As an impressionable young lad, I often sat in the dark movie theater without thought to what film I was about to see. Every Saturday I'd simply buy my ticket and watch whatever two movies were playing that afternoon. In most cases, they were what we used to call "scary" movies. Who knows when "horror movies" took hold?! Often I'd glance at the movie posters by the ticket booth where a pretty young girl reading a book waited for the next customer. I'm sure they only hired girls who didn't suffer from claustrophobia, because those booths were snug. Anyway.... To a child the movies were always entertaining, no matter the subject matter. But there were those films that just had that insane image that captured the whole feel of the movie. And that is the image I'd like to share with you. Although there were many non-horror movies that had such an image (the "kiss" in The Sergeant 1968, starring Rod Steiger and John Phillip Law), I'm only sharing images from "scary" movies today. I have reduced my list from 17 to 10 images for convenience. Let's begin the countdown.
10. Carnival of Souls (1962)
The specter at the window.
Poor Mary (Candace Hillgross) seems to have survived a traffic accident, but everywhere she goes, this pasty-faced man follows her, even as she's driving the highway. It was when this ghoulish figure appeared outside the passenger's side of the car that I was totally creeped out. How is he keeping up with a speeding car?1 His later appearances only served to remind us of his spectral nature and the fragile state of mind of our poor Mary.
9. Black Sunday (1960)
Asa (Barbara Steele) is punished for being a witch.
Tame by today's standard in horror fare, a spiked mask hammered into a woman's face was shocking at the time for this lad. I remember some girls in the audience screaming, adding to the feeling of repulsion I felt. Later when Asa reappears with holes in her face only added to my horror. This was the film that started my appreciation for actress Barbara Steele.
8. Dead of Night (1945)
Sally (Sally Ann Howe) recounts a Christmas ghost story.
The film Dead of Night is a British anthology of ghost stories and psychological suspense tales. They are all good, but the story of Hide 'n Seek, where the children seek hiding places throughout the vast mansion is my favorite. I saw this one on late night TV one Halloween night. I've always had a love for black and white cinema, no matter the genre. In the tale, Sally finds a room within a room, where a child weeps in fear. She puts the child to bed and returns to the game of hide and seek. She tells her friend about the child she found, and her friend is surprised to hear her speak of the child. Believing she is joking, he tells her about the brother murdered by his sister in that very room. Poor Sally upon hearing the tale, repeats over and over, "I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid," to hide the fear welling in her that she had just met a ghost.
7. Village of the Damned (1960)
The children first display their powers to destroy.
As a kid at the movies watching Village of the Damned, there is only mystery. Why did every person and animal fall asleep at the same time. Why did the police surround the village? How did all these women get pregnant at the same time? While I was waiting for a flying saucer to land and explain everything, these children born from that mysterious event begin to show powers. At first they act alone, but when they work together in this scene to display their destructive nature, I was creeped out by their eyes. Some couples in the theater left during this scene, which made me want to stay all the more to watch this to its conclusion.
6. The Fly (1958)
"Help me!"
The Fly, the original 50s version, was a tale of teleportation. More science fiction than horror. Until that fly's molecules get mixed up with the human's molecules, each creature part man, part insect. I could not understand how putting these two mixed up creatures back in the transporter would make them normal again. Wouldn't it make it worse?! Anyway, there's not much I can say about this iconic scene. Any kid who sat through this movie was traumatized for life. But in a good way.
5. Caltiki-The Immortal Monster (1959)
The dissolving face scene.
Caltiki was not just another Blob movie. The Blob came down in a meteor, while Caltiki was born from the radiation of a passing comet. See the difference. And beside, this monster was fed human flesh in Mayan sacrifices to the Goddess, Caltiki. How the monster became known as Caltiki is never explained. Nevertheless, the gore for this movie are some of the most memorable. Originally I wanted to find the scene where a piece of the creature is removed from a man's arm, revealing a few chunks of flesh still attached to the bones of his arm. Great scene. In this scene above, the same man is completely eaten, and we are shown the slow-motion dissolving of the flesh of his skull. Not as good as the arm scene, but still effective for this kid's imagination.
4. It! The Terror Beyond Space (1958)
It reaches the top level.
Not exactly a horror film, but a 50s science fiction creature feature. It!, the title monster, stowaways about an Earthbound rocket ship shaped like a cigar with fins. The ship is sectioned by floors leading up to the tip of the rocket where the control room sits. Of course, the monster works his way up, till what is left of the crew must do battle with the creature on the last tippy-top floor. I must point out that I saw this with my aunts at the drive-in, so the environment was already surreal as I was used to dark movie theaters, not wide-open parking lots. But when that monster reached the final level to confront our survivors, I was scared into the front seat with my aunt not only for comfort but for a closer look at the monster. I found these two shots of that scene. They're both a bit grainy, but in my mind, that was a monster, not a man in a monster suit.
3. Diary of a Madman (1963) The Horla
Vincent Price discovers what happens when the Horla possesses him.
I was obsessed with this movie. I saw it three times over the weekend. Many people are confused with the title, Diary of a Madman. Very misleading. The Horla would have been a better title, even with a kicker like, The Immortal Monster. Or something. There are no madmen. There is this creature that drives men to kill and mutilate women. The story is divided between the monster and the possessed men it controls. The exchanges with monster and man are scary, until our hero, Mr. Price, playing a judge who convicts an innocent man who was previously possessed by the Horla, must find a way to kill the creature that now is possessing him. The final battle is epic. But the haunting scene that turned the tide for me as a ten year old kid watching this horror classic, was when the judge finds his model's head inside the clay sculpture he himself made while under the Horla's spell. Still gives me the willies.
2. House on Haunted Hill (1959)/
She steps into the dark closet, and a ghost floats by.
House on Haunted Hill, another Vincent Price movie, promises scares and ghosts and murder. I mean, Elisha Cook Jr., wove a wicked history of the house that foreshadowed creeps that never came to be. Well, we do get murder. Still, until that cop-out ending, we did have one scare that made this kid jump. The old woman with the frozen scream on her face gliding by without touching the ground was a shocker. Too bad that was the set-up to the biggest fake-out, in this kid's humble opinion. The adult me still likes to watch this for Halloween with the grandkids.
1. Black Sabbath (1963)
Don't steal from the dead.
Black Sabbath was an Italian horror anthology. Each story has its merits, and depending on whether you watched the American or Italian version, The version I saw had "The Drop of Water" last; in the TV version, "The Wurdulak" was the final episode. I prefer the theatrical order because that's where the horrific scene that I write about today can be found. A nurse is brought in to prepare the corpse of an elderly woman for burial. She takes a ring from the old woman's hand, admires the trinket, and when she looks back at the corpse, her eyes are open and her lips are snarled around a grinding grin. In the theater, the audience jumped at this scene. Me included. Every time the camera panned to the old woman, we gasped. The suspense was tangible. We didn't need to see any horrific actions. It was enough to see this corpse just popping here and there with that face looking right at the audience. Yep, this is my number one haunting image in horror movies to this day.