Prince of Darkness

This John Carpenter film begins slowly and heavily, then gradually gains momentum as members of its tiny cast are turned into zombies. Some of the visuals are extremely well done—a decomposing body covered in bugs, a through the looking glass glimpse of another dimension, and a video broadcast from the future featuring a hooded figure positioned in the doorway of a church. The ideas, especially the tensions between science and religion, are worthy of further exploration, but this needed a stronger screenplay to plumb the depths of the abyss. (I nominate Nigel Kneale, whose work Carpenter alludes to in his pseudonymous writing credit, Martin Quatermass.)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Philip Kaufman’s top-grade remake of Don Siegel’s classic alien invasion movie, imaginatively transplanted to 1978 San Francisco. Political subversiveness isn’t a priority in W.D. Richter’s screenplay, but the identity-theft allegory remains urgent as ever. If it doesn’t deliver the emotional wallop of the previous film (with its heartbreaking third-act betrayal), the cast (led by Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams) is no less sympathetic in their own offbeat way. And the film has a magnificent stillness about it—the early, quiet scenes focusing on the domestic lives of the main characters are the most unsettling. The special effects, judiciously withheld until the second half, are marvelously grotesque spectacles, and culminate in an obscene birth sequence in which several body snatchers spring from their pods like freakish infants gasping for air. Once seen, the briefly glimpsed man-dog hybrid is not forgotten. Excellent visuals (the cinematographer was Michael Chapman, but the ominous low-key lighting suggests Gordon Willis), excellent final shot.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death

John Hancock’s uniquely strange psychodrama is one of the most underrated of the ‘70s—a gothic horror film for the hippie generation. The rural Connecticut locations are charged with exquisite foreboding, and Hancock makes subtle connections between vampirism and the free love philosophy. Zohra Lampert plays Jessica, a mentally fragile artist who moves into a decrepit country farmhouse with her husband and his best friend. After the party links up with a red-haired wanderer who eerily resembles a woman drowned in a nearby lake, Jessica gradually loses her grip on sanity. The plot is threadbare to the point of abstraction, but Hancock gets great mileage out of ordinary props (a wedding gown, a Victorian photograph, a cello case), and crafts at least one memorable set piece—a sequence in which an undead woman emerges from a lake in full matrimonial dress. The film doesn’t add up in the end, but it works uncommonly well as a succession of dreamy, elusive horror images.

Halloween

Thinly conceived but brilliantly executed, John Carpenter’s slasher prototype is unquestionably one of the most influential films of all time (although it owes a debt to Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, especially for its extensive use of subjective camera). It is an uneasy marriage of sophisticated filmmaking technique and undernourished subject matter. Carpenter’s expertise at creating tension through stealthy camera movements (not to mention his uncanny use of foreground and background) is best evidenced in the superbly orchestrated opening shot, a virtuoso single-take that travels through a darkened house and up a staircase before witnessing a murder by stabbing. The suspense mechanisms are so intoxicating that you don’t even question the motivation of the killer—what is his game, and why is he stalking these victims in particular? The idea of evil incarnate, relatively unexplored by Carpenter’s and Debra Hill’s screenplay, may have boosted this into metaphysical territory (the true province of the horror film), but the filmmakers are simply content to serve up a continuous succession of jack-in-the-box thrills and perfectly timed “boo!” moments.

Kill, Baby...Kill!

Mario Bava, the Italian horror maestro whose enthusiastic ‘60s work initiated the giallo movement, directed this hallucinatory chiller about a series of murders in a small country village. The clues lead to a ghostly girl whose appearance is always preceded by an ominous bouncing ball. The plot, as is usually the case with Bava, is barely intelligible, lame, and convoluted. But the furious, fanatical use of splashy colors is adequate compensation. At the very least, the film is worth seeing for an ingenious scene in which the male lead follows his doppelganger through a series of identical rooms.

The Norliss Tapes

Dan Curtis helmed this busted TV pilot (written by William F. Nolan from a short story by Fred Mustard Stewart) about a writer who gets mixed up in a series of murders perpetuated by an undead sculptor. The quaint aesthetic contributions provided by the filmmakers will be most meaningful to horror buffs who remember with affection Curtis’s earlier TV movies (Scream of the Wolf, Trilogy of Terror, and especially The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler). All the Curtis trademarks are here—the Wellesian low angles, the deliberate placement of objects in the foreground, the insouciant zooms, the inclement weather, the atmospheric groaning Bob Cobert’s score. What the project lacks, finally, is a compelling leading man. Roy Thinnes has the swagger of a prototypical ‘70s hero, but he’s no match for the absent Darren McGavin as Kolchak, whose slovenly charm and dry sense of humor are sorely missed. Still, there’s a thrilling chase scene that plays like a rerun of the first zombie attack from Night of the Living Dead, the creepiest sculpture of an ancient demon you could ever hope to see, and a genuinely surprising climax in which said sculpture springs suddenly to life. The Big Sur locations provide a nice backdrop for the ghastliness of the proceedings.

Black Christmas

Bob Clark’s slasher prototype is much scarier than Halloween, if not so technically accomplished. Made in Canada, it’s one of the earliest horror films in which a telephone becomes a major prop (an idea filched for the subsequent When a Stranger Calls), and its novel use of subjective camera (which employs an evocative fisheye lens) is chillingly effective. The brilliant soundtrack mixes discordant piano riffs with eerie sound effects (including some of the most disturbing prank phone calls ever conceived) to excellent advantage, and the final fifteen minutes, which contain a now familiar revelation (“The calls are coming from inside the house!”), are incredibly suspenseful. Roy Moore’s screenplay leaves things frustratingly oblique by the film’s end, but it taps into something very eerie regarding the nature of the killer (a criminally insane man-child supposedly connected with an infant’s death sometime in his past). Keir Dullea makes an impression as the film’s prime suspect, a high-strung pianist, and the rest of the cast, which include Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, and John Saxon, are much stronger than the average nubile teens usually found in films of this ilk.

Countess Dracula

Hammer horror disguised as historical pageantry, and clumsy, despite an effective opening sequence. Scream queen Ingrid Pitt is somewhere near her iconic best (though her voice has been dubbed by a British-born actress), and the woodland locations are extraordinary—deep, green, exotic. But Pitt’s character arc is faulty—there are no moral crises and therefore no psychological insight. Jeremy Paul based his screenplay upon the real-life figure of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who apparently bathed in the blood of virgins to maintain her youth (and was later brought to ruin by an unsuccessful line of skin care products).

The Comedy of Terrors

A horror burlesque without legs, starring Vincent Price and Peter Lorre as undertakers eager to boost their languishing coffin sales by any means necessary. Richard Matheson’s script is manic but unfunny, and his one-liners are upstaged by cheesy effects (such as Keystone Cops-style fast-motion), though the last twenty minutes are quite lively, and director Jacques Tourneur knows where to place the camera. Naturally, the film’s saving grace is its game cast (which include Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone), who each risk mortification for the sake of the show. Part of the pleasure is nostalgic—it comes from seeing a troupe of former greats in constant motion and also from fondly remembering that, once upon a time, they each did more reputable work than this.

The Omen

Hokum elevated to art status. The sensationalist plot, about an American ambassador (Gregory Peck) who learns that his cherub-faced son (Harvey Stephens) is actually the Antichrist, is exciting in a dime-store novel sort of way, and the procession of inventively staged death sequences is the glue that holds the whole sadistic romp together. The discreet use of gore (including cinema’s niftiest beheading), the morbid attention to detail (the goldfish floundering in the broken fishbowl), and the operatic, apocalyptic nature of the plot coalesce seamlessly, and Richard Donner’s direction keeps things moving at a steady clip. Not even screenwriter David Seltzer’s shameless exploitation of apocryphal literature dampens the fun. Huge contributions from cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, whose lustrous images give the film more polish than it deserves, and, of course, composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose innovative theme music won him a well-deserved Oscar as well as a place beside Bernard Herrmann as a prime orchestrator of ominousness.