Special Halloween Edition
Last October, in keeping with the season, I featured a list of scary films. I’ve decided to make it an annual presentation, and I’ll try not to repeat any titles. In this special edition of The Moveable Marquee, I will not write my usual extensive reviews, but simple, short capsules on six fright-films that do not appear on most run-of-the-mill Halloween movie lists. I think you’ll enjoy these movies if you’re in the mood for ghosts and ghouls and all things paranormal and macabre. They’re scary up to a point (all were made before digital special effects) and will go well with a little brandy in your cider. (Note: there are later remakes of some of these films.)
Six Classic Fright-Films for Halloween.
By Steven Huff
First, I want to focus on a film by director Jacques Tourneur, who teamed up with producer Val Lewton to make some classic macabre movies, such as I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man, and The Cat People.
Cat People (1942). Directed by Jacques Tourneur. With Simone Simon, Tom Conway, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph. Written by DeWitt Bodeen. Cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca. Black and White. 1 hr., 13 mins.
Streaming on Prime
Cat People begins like a simple love drama. A man meets a woman at the zoo near the panther cage; there is immediate chemistry, and they fall in love. To Oliver (Smith) Irina (Simon) is exotic: a Serbian woman working in New York as a fashion designer. However, there is something peculiar about her: her purpose in visiting the zoo is to draw sketches of cats impaled by swords. That only makes her more fascinating and desirable to Oliver. After they marry things turn dark between them. She believes, from an old Serbian folk story, that she may be descended from a witch, and that if kissed she might become a panther and kill. So, she keeps their marriage unconsummated, driving her new husband into the arms of another woman. And she’s right—there is paranormal trouble brewing in the pot. Tourneur builds tension carefully and creepily into a symbolic mystery of eros and death. Oh, and the swimming pool scene is, well… Tourneur knew that the greatest fright is in what you do not see. This is a classic. Simone Simon, veteran of great French films, such as Le Bete Humaine and Le Plaisir, shows she can be downright scary.
Now for two by William Castle. He was a B-movie producer and director, almost always on the cheap, but he got great effect out of what money he begged from the studios —he did, however, produce Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, which of course is an A-list film. Here are two of his macabre films, House on Haunted Hill, and Mr. Sardonicus.
House on Haunted Hill (1959). Directed by William Castle. With Vincent Price, Elisha Cook, Jr., Carol Ohmart, Julie Mitchum, Alan Marshal. Written by Robb White. Cinematography by Carl E. Guthrie. Black and White. 1 hr. 15 mins.
Streaming on Criterion, Prime and several other streaming services.
I saw House on Haunted Hill in the theater when I was a kid. It scared me then. Seeing the movie now, I see a playfulness blended with the ghastly, although it’s by no means a comedy. The premise: fabulously wealthy Frederick Loren (Price) and his wife Annabelle (Ohmart) invite five people of dissimilar backgrounds and professions to a soiree at their reputedly haunted mansion. Guests have previously agreed to a challenge: each will receive ten thousand dollars if they survive whatever the evil spirits have in store until eight a.m. That would be almost $100,000 in today’s money. So, why not take the risk? Of course, it’s going to be a rough night: terrible things are going to happen.
Price is his usual elegantly frightening self. The character Ruth Bridges is played by Julie Mitchum, Robert Mitchum’s older sister. The ever-dependable character actor Elisha Cook, Jr. plays the alcoholic former owner of the mansion. And there is a psychiatrist played by Alan Marshal who poo-poos the supernatural until it comes to get him.
William Castle and giant cockroach
Mr. Sardonicus. Directed by William Castle (1961). With Oscar Homolka, Ronald Lewis, Audrey Dalton, Guy Rolfe. Written By Ray Russell. Cinematography by Burnett Guffey. Black and White. 1 hr., 29 mins.
Streaming on Tubi
This is another movie that I saw when it hit the second-run theaters. I hesitated to include this one because it’s offered only on Tubi, which means ad interruptions, but if you’re watching it on Halloween Eve, you’re going to be interrupted by trick-or-treaters anyway. Sardonicus is Latin for sardonic; but in this case it apparently refers to risus sardonicus, which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “An involuntary or spasmodic grin consequent on some morbid condition.” The dictionary goes on to quote Blanchard’s Physician’s Dictionary of 1663: “The corners of the mouth are frequently retracted into a disagreeable smile….” And what if that smile were truly horrid and permanent? Well… Twenty minutes into this ghoulish story, it will make dreadful sense. And some of this movie’s effects are truly horrific. This is another tale set in a remote castle, complete with a baron (Lewis), a demented accomplice (Homolka), a torture chamber for unlucky girls, and enough fog to cover half the surface of the earth.
William Castle himself introduces the movie and reappears in the end to take a vote from the audience, thumbs up or thumbs down, to decide the evil baron’s fate. Ushers in the theaters did the counting. Apparently, no audience ever voted thumbs up—the baron was truly reprehensible—and an alternate ending was never screened. Castle was full of such gimmicks.
And now for a couple of horror films from Italian director Mario Bava. After working as a cinematographer and special-effects man on Italian films such as Hercules and Hercules Unchained, Bava became a director of low budget chillers, and is now regarded as the father of Italian horror.
Mario Bava
Black Sabbath (1963) Directed by Mario Bava. With Boris Karloff, Michelle Mercier, Lidia Alfonsi, Mark Damon, Susy Andersen. Cinematography by Ubaldo Terzano. Color. 1 hour, 37 mins.
Streaming on YouTube
Since the movie is Italian-made, make sure when you go to YouTube to find the English language version. Tubi has only the Italian version. Black Sabbath is three tales liberally adapted from stories by Anton Chekov, Guy De Maupassant, and Count Leo Tolstoy’s second cousin Aleksei Tolstoy. Dear old Boris introduces the stories (and plays a vampire in the third); he can be très charming when he’s not trying to spook you to death. In the first story, a woman who steals a ring from the finger of a dead woman she was preparing for the undertaker is pursued by, guess who…the dead woman. The second is a psychological terror-tale about a woman who is driven mad by phone calls from her deceased lover who has a serious bone to pick. In the third story, a Russian count follows the traces of a murder to the mansion of a family who are at war with an old lineage of vampires. When the family’s patriarch (Karloff) returns in the night as a vampire himself, all hell breaks loose. All three stories are great fun. A bit of trivia: The British rock band Black Sabbath took their name from this movie, or so they claimed.
Black Sunday (1960). Directed by Mario Bava. W/ Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea Checchi, Ivo Garrani, Arturo Dominici. Liberally adapted from a story by Nikolay Gogol. Cinematography by Mario Bava. Black and White. 1 hr., 27 mins.
Streaming on AMC, Plex, Tubi, YouTube
“Remember the sabbath and keep it holy…” In seventeenth-century Russia, a mob of Inquisitionists executes a gorgeous young witch (Steele) by hammering the spiked mask of Satan to her face. Before she dies, she curses them all and vows that her spirit will get revenge. They are about to burn her body on a pile of straw when a sudden rainstorm puts the fire out. A true case of deus ex machina. Signally spooked, they dump her in a heavy stone crypt in a family tomb. Two hundred years later, two doctors on their way to a conference visit the ruined tomb and inadvertently rouse her curiously undecayed body. Now she will stalk the descendants of those who murdered her long ago, wreaking bloody vengeance. One of the doctors (Checchi) is among the collateral damage. Special effects are by Mario Bava himself and his son Eugenio Bava, who followed in his papa’s footsteps.
And now, speaking of Italian-made movies….
Dante and Virgil approach the Devil Himself
L'Inferno (Dante's Inferno) (1911) Directed by Francesco Bertolini. With Salvatore Papa, Arturo Pirovano, Augusto Milla, Giuseppe de Liguoro. Cinematography by Emilio Roncarolo. Silent, Black & White. 1 hour, 4 mins. Italian.
Streaming on YouTube
Many people do not care for silent movies, but I promise you’ll enjoy this one. Enhanced Cinema did a 4K restoration of this extraordinary silent classic and posted it on YouTube. It is widely considered the first horror film. The title cards, wonderfully illustrated by drawings that Gustav Doré made of Dante’s epic, are all in Italian. But don’t worry; if you don’t already know the general story-line, it’s a cinch to follow: Thirteenth-century poet Dante Alighieri is walking through the woods one day when he finds himself at the gates of hell. Enough to shake anyone up. But Virgil, the Roman poet whom Dante admires above all others, gives him the grand tour through the circles of hell, viewing every kind of torment imaginable, all the way to the center where Satan, encased in ice, amuses himself by devouring the unlucky humans within his reach. It’s an hour and four minutes of visual effects that are striking for the time, including double and triple exposures; the sets and costumes are wonderful. It was shot outside when most films were made in a studio. Cinematographer Emilio Roncarolo also shot Homer’s Odyssey the same year.
According to Antonella Braida, and Luisa Callé (Dante on View: The Reception of Dante in the Visual and Performing Arts, Ashgate, 2007), L’Inferno was made at a time when much criticism in Italy was aimed at the new medium of film for co-opting audiences and stealing actors from the legitimate stage. In response, movie makers tried to raise the sophistication of film subject matter—thus L’Inferno and Odyssey. Dante’s work was the subject of nearly a dozen Italian films between 1908 and 1912.
That’s it. I’ve done my best to scare you. See you on November 1 for the next regular issue of The Moveable Marquee.
All images are from public domain sources.
Many thanks to Barry Voorhees for editing.
Text copyright 2024 by Steven Huff
By the way, my recent book is available from the usual online sources, but I suggest ordering from an independent bookstore. They need the business.
From Syracuse University Press. $32.95