Supernatural Horror Films

Final suggestion for today, but I will try to give you some more when I find a bit more time to brainstorm, Khanners.

Salomé wrote:

This is also worth watching if you haven't already, Khanners.

A 2007 remake of the 1959 classic, right? Both are on my list.

Salomé wrote:

And this, which you should watch just for the quality of Angela Pleasence's performance alone, imho.

Ignorant sot that I am, I didn't realize Donald had a daughter who is an actress. Live and learn.

This film looks like a bit of a slasher.

Salomé wrote:

Final suggestion for today, but I will try to give you some more when I find a bit more time to brainstorm, Khanners.

We're very much on the same page--or frame, as the case may be--Sabs. I bought this on DVD last month and was EXTREMELY impressed with it. Not so easy to make truly scary films back in 1960 given the limitations on what directors could show back then, but this film really delivers the goods all the same. Lee, of course, is terrific, and I think the conclusion may possibly have influenced Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Salomé wrote:

And this, which you should watch just for the quality of Angela Pleasence's performance alone, imho.

Ignorant sot that I am, I didn't realize Donald had a daughter who is an actress. Live and learn.

This film looks like a bit of a slasher.

It's more psychological horror, but very much centralized around a place (that scary house).

Last night I watched Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981), a made-for-boob toob film starring Charles Durning and Marlon Brando's older sister, Jocelyn. I had heard very good things about this picture, otherwise I wouldn't have watched it. Still, I was a bit skeptical. No more. This film is far better--and scarier--than other supernatural horror releases from that era such as The Amityville Horror, Halloween III and Children of the Corn, and surely achieved its aims with a much smaller budget and considerably less fanfare. It also had to operate within the parameters of primetime television. No mean feat!

Without giving up the jig, I'll just say that the plot revolves around the execution of an innocent, mentally retarded young man in a small town, and the otherworldly vengeance that is meted out to his executioners. The picture does a terrific job of building tension and suspense, as a certain agricultural apparition manifests itself with dire results following hard on its heels. Durning, the ringleader of the baddies, is convinced that the specter is the artifice of various townspeople hoping to smoke out the guilty men. He refuses to see the terrifying reality right to the very end.

Speaking of the end, it is highlighted by a chillingly macabre exhumation sequence and a visually striking chase scene through a pumpkin patch involving Durning and a motorized plow. Jolly good stuff, then!

Now Dark Night proves a bit predictable in showing agricultural implements that are later put to grisly use, and equally predictable in its negative depiction of rural America, patriotism and the military, but these are niggles. This is an overlooked gem that every fan of the genre should see.

Heh, I remember seeing that one sat on the shelf in the local video-rental shop back in the 80s Khanners. I think I was put off by its made-for-TV status, though.

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Blunt Instrument wrote:

Heh, I remember seeing that one sat on the shelf in the local video-rental shop back in the 80s Khanners. I think I was put off by its made-for-TV status, though.

You've been missing out, mate. Never too late to snag the DVD.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Heh, I remember seeing that one sat on the shelf in the local video-rental shop back in the 80s Khanners. I think I was put off by its made-for-TV status, though.

Videos, shops, television. It's a veritable history lesson this forum.

I vaguely recall an outfit called Blockbuster...

Strangways&Quarrel wrote:

I've seen it. Very good film with a really great hazy visual style and plenty of frightening imagery. Definitely Adrian Lyne's best work (and his odd man out given his previous two films were relationship drama/thrillers 9 1/2 Weeks and Fatal Attraction) and was a big inspiration for the Silent Hill videogame series. Also features a very noteworthy performance from Danny Aiello.

Speaking of 9 1/2 Weeks, or more specifically, its star, Mickey Rourke, I watched Angel Heart (1987) last night for probably about the ninth-and-a-half time. This is a neo-noir voodoo/private detective flick set in New York and New Orleans in 1955. (Bond fans will note that Ian Fleming's Live and Let Die was set partially in Harlem at about the same time and featured voodoo.) In addition to Rourke, it features Lisa Bonet in a role that now makes me think she may have taught Bill Cosby everything he knows, Charlotte Rampling as an exceptionally refined witch, and Bob DeNiro as Old Scratch himself.

Personally, I've always found this picture to be more fascinating and entertaining than frightening, but others I know consider it scary as hell.

The plot is rather on the convoluted side, so I'll just say it involves an occult crooner who sells his soul to Satan for stardom and then attempts to welsh out by stealing the soul of an innocent G.I. who's just returned to New York from World War II. Satan, in the guise of a whimsically menacing Frenchman named Louis Cypher, engages the services of private dick Harry Angel (Rourke) to track down the welsher. Obviously, Cypher doesn't explain the true nature of Angel's commission, which he only realizes, to his ultimate horror, in the final sequences of the picture.

This is a beautifully made and beautiful film. There's a scene where Angel tails a voodoo-practicing blues guitarist through the bayous of Louisiana at night as Dr. John's "Zuzu Mamou" plays in the background that is aesthetically marvelous. And it's just one of many. There is also a repeated view of a New York City building in which a horrifying Satanic rite occurs that looks very much like the album cover of Led Zeppelin's "Physical Graffiti" (I'm sure Jimmy Page approved).

Rourke is absolutely perfect as the greasy yet preternaturally cool gumshoe Angel, and DeNiro chews the scenery with gusto as the Prince of Darkness. There is also a great deal of sly and wry humor in their interchanges.

At bottom, this is a unique supernatural horror film and undoubtedly belongs in the genre's pantheon of greats.

"Ouija 2: Origin of Evil" is really a lot better than an entry into a franchise devoted to a game has any right being.

Mostly thanks to Mike Flanagan.



It doesn't quite stick the landing (at least for my money) but what comes before that is a very well made little horror film.

Salomé wrote:

"Ouija 2: Origin of Evil" is really a lot better than an entry into a franchise devoted to a game has any right being.

Mostly thanks to Mike Flanagan.



It doesn't quite stick the landing (at least for my money) but what comes before that is a very well made little horror film.

Another one that is firmly on my Watch List.

Incidentally, I actually received a Ouija Board as a Christmas present when I was about 12-13 years old. I really knew nothing about the thing and assumed it was merely a harmless toy (which it may be, BTW). Playing with it, I never had any supernatural experiences, but I began to hear stories about bad things that happened to people who played with it, and discretion being the better part of valor, chucked the blasted thing in the rubbish bin.

The fact that Parker Brothers still own the Ouija board trademark is one of my favourite scepticism-friendly facts.

Seem to recall that Cosby strongly disapproved of Bonet's sex scenes in Angel Heart, fearing their effect on the audience of his nice family sitcom. Bloody hypocrite.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

The fact that Parker Brothers still own the Ouija board trademark is one of my favourite scepticism-friendly facts.

Seem to recall that Cosby strongly disapproved of Bonet's sex scenes in Angel Heart, fearing their effect on the audience of his nice family sitcom. Bloody hypocrite.

Steamy isn't a big enough word for the big sex scene. I betcha Bitchcraft would blush. (Well, maybe not...)

Saw The Devil Rides Out this weekend. Not a bad film at all. I really don't understand why Hammer gets a bad rap. Just about everything I've seen from them is top-shelf or close to it.

As for TDRO, what an earnest picture it is! Every actor, including legendary hams Christopher Lee, Leon Greene and Charles Gray plays every seen straight up. It was filmed in '68, but had an almost Victorian moral tone that was, quite frankly, refreshing. The film treats diabolism as a terrible menace to all involved with it, and something that must be guarded against. Often times, it seems, the pop culture treats Satanism and black magic as essentially harmless curiosities defined as a concatenation of archaic symbols and rather silly rites, but without any real victims. TDRO certainly shows the symbols and rites--there is a Satanic bacchanale in the woods of Great Britain that may have influenced the voodoo scenes in Live and Let Die--but then winds it all up with the attempted sacrifice of a child. In other words, there's much more to it all than pentagrams, inverted crosses and adjuration of Christ.

Ultimately, TDRO is suspenseful and interesting rather than genuinely frightening, but there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you want a little spooky entertainment rather than nightmare-inducing horror.

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I saw Cat People soon after it came out--probably on HBO. All I remember is the horrifying scene where the leopard rips off the zoo-keeper's arm. A bit on the grisly side, that.

I also see that Moroder did the score for that film. That name seems to be popping up quite a bit lately.

PS--How did the hippies kill of the Wheatley series?

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Erica Ambler wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

How did the hippies kill of the Wheatley series?

Perhaps I was being melodramatic ... changing times more than anything; The Devil Rides Out was written in the 1930s, but wasn’t filmed until 1968, by which time the so-called counter culture was well underway. Absolute evil was dismissed just 20 years after the Germans had proved its very existence.

Hey, man, the devil is a much misunderstood dude …

As are his worshipers...

Still, some US films managed to buck the trend. The Exorcist and The Omen, to name a couple, certainly showed no sympathy for the devil. Or his minions.

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John Carpenter once again gave the female lead to Jamie Lee Curtis because in spite of the success of "Halloween", her career had yet to take off truly.

Erica Ambler wrote:

The Fog (1980) might meet your supernatural criteria, Khan. Tale of a Marin County town paying the price for the deliberate wrecking of a ship many years earlier. Not classic John Carpenter, but even on a bad day he's better than most other directors. Great music, too.

Carpenter's great, no doubt. Christine is just about as good a Stephen King film as there is (yes, including The Shining), although I may rate 1408 a bit higher. Carpenter is also no mean cinematic composer. Almost as much of a Renaissance man as Tom Hardy...

Grave Encounters (2011)

Watched this last night. Disappointing. It's a mash-up of Blair Witch Project and 1408 in that it's based upon "found footage" shot by young people investigating supernatural phenomena, and, like 1408, is set in a building that is itself sentient and malevolent. Aside from being entirely unoriginal, its dramatis personae, as with BWP, are incredibly obnoxious and thus unsympathetic. Among the doomed crew is a belligerent hoodrat to whom none of the cucked soy-boys will stand up, and a facially-pierced and decidedly unwinsome girl whose job is to scream constantly, and when not screaming, to drop F-bombs. Speaking of which, none of the characters' vocabulary extends much beyond that infelicitous word.

Compounding the problem of unsympathetic characters is the found-footage camerawork, which is disorienting in the extreme. Now that may be consistent with the nature of the footage, but the viewer often cannot determine exactly what it is that is besetting and terrifying the characters. And if you can't get a fix on the source of the horror, it is difficult to feel horror. And verily, this film didn't scare me in the slightest.

The best features of the film are the acting--Sean Rogerson as lead paranormal investigator Lance Preston, and Mackenzie Gray as putative psychic Houston Gray are particularly good--and the picture's first third, which sends up so-called "reality" television, displaying its fraudulent nature. There is some good humor here. Alas, this film works better as a comedy than a supernatural horror film, and that is not a good thing.