ok lets all shit our pants to something old: pre-2006 horror film thread

I wasn't aware of The Veil.

I was asked recently what was my favourite horror film. I couldn't answer but it seemed like there were probably only 20 horror films I truly loved at maximum and even then I'd have lots of reservations about a lot of them.
And a lot of them are borderline cases, and not because I think those are inherently better (as some people do).

One of my favourite borderline cases is The Shout and I was just thinking about how that never gets enough love. Please see it if you haven't seen it.

I just looked again into the availability of Ghost Of Yotsuya (Nakagawa version) and there is finally a dvd and a bunch of other 50s/60s Japanese horror films from a region 2 company called New Star. I bought it and something I've never heard of called The Ghost Cat Of Otama Pond.

There are like eight million Japanese films from that era that I know nothing about beyond the fact that they all have 'Kaidan' somewhere in the title.

Yes, a lot of them are very similar too, not unlike the j-horror wave. I might try out a few others from New Star but I'm not that optimistic.

There's like four or five Yotsuya films within that era. I've seen a mid50s black and white one, Illusion Of Blood and the Nakagawa version (the classic, probably best version).

So far Nakagawa's Ghost Of Yotsuya, House, Kwaidan, Kuroneko, Onibaba and Lake Of Dracula are the best old ones I've seen. I think Jigoku is quite overrated but there are cool scenes in it.

Have you seen The Shout? It's got John Hurt and Alan Bates.

88 Films (region 2 only?) are doing cult Asian films on disc, so far Hex, Black Magic and Seeding Of A Ghost are the horror films on that list. I think some of them have martial arts but may or may not focus on that.

The Shout is a fascinating film. Is the horror Bates' character's overwhelmingly charismatic aggressive masculinity or something more primal?

We're big horror fans in our house although my o/h tends to gravitate towards newer films. She's away this weekend and all I fancy doing is vegging out on the sofa and watching some classic and cult older flicks. Absolutely loved things like The Innocents, but I'm not really up on much from the 50s, 60s and 70s as much as recent things. What is good?

Obvs I've seen the Wicker Man and Blood On Satan's Claw - rural horrors / UK horrors are especially welcome.

Naked Blood (1996, Hisayasu Sato)
Repeat viewing. An alienated young man invents a serum that causes people to experience pain as pleasure, tragedy ensuses. This film seems known only to hardcore gore & transgression buffs, but I think it's an amazing work of art. A justly notorious (though relatively brief) midfilm auto-cannibalism setpiece drastically limits its potential audience, but I strongly recommend Naked Blood to anyone who thinks they might be able to stomach the gore. Surreal, quietly anguished and strangely haunting. A longtime personal favorite that holds up remarkably well.

This is one of the most messed-up films I've ever seen. One scene especially was enough to turn my friend a very peculiar pall of green.

DL, give this one a go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Demon

cheers, i will do just that :-)

Wish I could say there was loads of good rural horror but not much springs to mind.

Onibaba is set in fields of tall grass.

Night Of The Devils (70s Italian) is in an abandoned village in the woods.

Grapes Of Death is in a hilly village.

Let's Scare Jessica To Death.

I don't know why there isn't more rural horror because it should be cheap to film.

For UK stuff I'd go for Death Line, Curse Of The Werewolf, Mumsy Nanny Sonny & Girly, The Company Of Wolves, The Devils, Lair Of The White Worm.

Penda's Fen is British and rural but might not be horror enough.

The Shout is on the Devon coastline.

The VVitch is HIGHLY recommended rural horror if you haven't seen it yet.

oh yeah it's brilliant the VVitch, watched it the other day.

RAG - of that list I've only seen Let's Scare Jessica To Death. Been wanting to watch Penda's Fen for ages. Been watching a lot of that sort of hauntology folk-horror stuff lately.

Those Blind Dead films I recall taking place in the sticks.

Not a movie per se but don't sleep on Apaches.

Most of the UK films I listed aren't rural.

The Falling (which I was talking about in the newer horror film thread) has some of the vibe of a lot of the old folk horror stuff even if it isn't that setting.

I haven't read it yet but Richard Gavin's collection Sylvan Dread: Tales Of Pastoral Darkness sounds good.
https://threehandspress.com/sylvan-dread/

You could give some of the BBC ghost stories for Christmas a shot. I'd pick Whistle and I'll Come to You followed by A Warning to the Curious and The Signalman.

I've read The Signalman - it's pretty good

Actually Schalcken the Painter is up there with Whistle as the best of them.

Lots of good Australian horror/not horror too like Picnic at Hanging Rock, Wake in Fright and Long Weekend

I found Schalcken a bit of disappointment, I must admit - so low-key as to barely be a ghost story at all, and a little bit as a consequence. On the other hand Robin Redbreast, also excavated by the BFI, is second only to the Wicker Man in the rural creep stakes.

little bit DULL

Nah I was into how low-key it was and found John Justin genuinely unnerving

Le Fanu's Schalcken short story was pretty scary and a bit gruesome (he wrote two versions, supposed to be equally valid, but I only read one), I've been a bit hesitant to see the film.

Robin Redbreast sounds pretty good, and it's on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyztk4--8YQ

TALES OF TERROR

I think this is one of the weaker Corman directed Poe films. Aside from the set design and painted views of the mansion from the first segment, I didn't get much out of it. Making the second segment humorous seemed like an odd choice and it never even gets as funny as The Raven.

I found most of the Arrow disc features more interesting than the actual film. Including a short film version of Black Cat from the 90s that has the narrator confess the whole story in prison. Another feature surprised me with just how many Poe films there are, even though I knew there were lots; unfortunately the Watson/Webber version of Usher and the animated Tell Tale Heart weren't mentioned despite the claim that short Poe films are often better.

BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR

I youtubed this one because the disc is really expensive right now. I'm glad I did because it doesn't live up to the hype, although it's very impressive for a student film and I admire some of the approach. It's one of those films where dreams and reality blend and nobody knows which is which. A big red monster with long claws and sharp teeth follows the ultra square and straight characters around.

It's become very apparent that I'd rather watch a boring film with nice set design than something that looks much more engaging like Taking Of Deborah Logan, Green Room, The Wailing or It Follows. A nice setting really sustains me. Not sure about Sauna.

GHOST OF YOTSUYA (Nakagawa 1959)

My second viewing of this, first time was on youtube when that was the only place I could find it. A samurai called Lemon and his accomplice do some social climbing by killing the right people until they're haunted by the ghosts of their victims. It takes a while to get started but it makes up for it in the hallucinatory hauntings in the last third of the film, which has some really brilliant images with eerie lighting. Great banging and clattering soundtrack.

GHOST CAT OF OTAMA POND

I was pleasantly surprised by this. It does follow a similar formula to a lot of the old Japanese ghost films (ghosts haunt their killers and trick them with hallucinations into killing each other) but there was enough to keep it more interesting than a lot of similar films.
It starts with a modern framing device then goes into the past (where the majority of the story takes place) to explain some of the strange things that happened to them. It features one of those Japanese cat woman ghosts that pull at people as if they were using invisible string (I don't think I've seen one of these cat woman in a film after the 60s, perhaps because they risk looking quite silly).
I was unsure whether there was a few ghosts or just the cat ghost creating the appearance of more ghosts. It's consistently dusky, the settings are better than the similar films I've seen and the music was very good too. In some ways I like it better than 1959 Yotsuya.

There's 9 films in the Greek label New Star's Japanese Horror Classics line. I just bought the remaining 6 I haven't seen (I already have the Criterion Jigoku). I hope they're good too.

Wow at the music for Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key. I watched the trailer and the look of the film doesn't interest me much. I've mostly lost my appetite for giallo. CD soundtrack is way out my price range so I think I'll get the film someday. Bruno Nicolai sounds pretty good in general but I haven't seen any of his films.

Looking through the filmographies of Christopher Lee, Karloff and Price, there's quite a few gothic films I've never heard of.

I gave The Shout a go the other day and wasn't taken by it. Not sure if it was my copy, but the dialogue was pretty muffled and hard to follow. Actually the whole thing was disorienting, but not in a particularly good way. Mitigating factors included the terror shout itself, and the lead antagonist in general.

Watched Equinox (bit silly - poor acting and risible special effects but no totally useless)
and also a bunch of BBC Ghost Stories - the Signalman (good but not as eerie as the book), Number 12 and A View From A Hill, both of which were okay but rather mild as far as even BBC productions go.

Anyone seen The Uncanny with Peter Cushing? From the trailer it looks pretty funny, it's a cat attack film.

Equinox rules. Are the effects still risible if one takes onboard that it's basically a student film?

yeah i hadn't realised that at the time of writing. i take it back

Also Fritz Lieber as crazy old man!

Saw Equinox as a kid, on family vacation with other kids, late night, all clustered around an old tv. Stuck with me, with the stop-motion animation, the creepy park ranger, and the last scene with its eerie music cue. Will have to reborrow that from the library.

I've been very curious about Equinox as, on paper, it seems like kind of an outlier among the films generally Collected by Criterion.

I certainly doubt it would have crossed their mind to issue it if not for the Dennis Muren connection.

I'm glad that Criterion over past decade or so has definitely been branching out to restore more obscure/cult/non-prestige films

You know, every once in a while I try to give Fulci a chance, but I think he's just really shitty. Like, I was watching "Zombie" today, and it's just so dull and dirty, badly acted and badly shot, not unlike '70s porn. Just shoddy and barely plotted, with the occasional shaky close up of something gross. I know at some point or another I've seen "City of the Dead" and "The Beyond," too, and same thing: just totally artless. It's like they boil down to "this is the one where the zombie, nude woman and a shark tussle underwater," or "this is the one where the person vomits their innards." Just don't get it. Unlike Argento, who has, I dunno, an aesthetic, I guess, and something in the way of directorial chops. Just imo, I know the guy (Fulci) has his fans.

whoever has written this blog has done some sterling work in analysing and writing about folk horror films

https://chariotrpg.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1

Josh- I'm with you on some of that but I don't think he's totally artless. There's good stuff in some of his films and occasionally they have a compelling look.

Dog Latin- I must read that link soon.

Josh, have you tried Lizard in a Woman's Skin? It's obviously part of that wave of gialli ripping off the Argento animal films but it really has a unique style to it and (in my memory at least) leans more into the post-Antonioni/Blow-Up urban anomie stuff. Or at least, while it's still silly- sinister hippies, etc- it at least seems to understand what it's stealing from and gleefully turning into exploitation, unlike most Italian horror films that fail to do even a little bit of their homework and are content to just make a copy of a copy of etc.

Two other things to note: one, it does have an extremely gross shock dog vivisection moment (thankfully not real animal cruelty as in yr various Mondo/cannibal films, but an upsettingly realistic simulation of same from E.T./Possession's Carlo Rambaldi), and two, it has a better Morricone score than anything he did for Argento. By miles and miles. Seriously, it's so much better than the three animal films' scores that it's kind of embarrassing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELTBBDyk2mI

Intriguing! Reads a bit like a trashy take on Cat People. I don't mind giallo films, because they tend to be more atmospheric, so I'll give it a shot.

Disagree that Fulci is 'artless', though his best work hasn't always been well-served by home video presentations. Interesting interview here with film restorer James White, who oversaw Arrow's delicious Zombie Flesh Eaters restoration from a couple of years back - this is the most relevant passage:

The reviews we've received for Zombie have been overwhelmingly positive - considering how it was represented on VHS here in Britain for so many years, I think people were amazed to see the film looking as good as it did! That said, It shouldn't really surprise anyone familiar with Fulci's work - he's a director with an amazing eye, the camerawork by Sergio Salvati is frequently stunning, and the combined use of locations, colour, and music by Fabio Frizzi make Zombie one of the best films of its kind. That said, it does bring up something interesting in terms of your question about properly serving a given film's aesthetic. Might some viewers actually prefer the rough VHS-era representation they grew up with, complete with faded colour, horrible sound, video snow and tape damage? It certainly makes for a very different viewing experience, but one I suppose that should be treated as just as valid, as it was viewed by so many people, particularly in this country, in exactly this way.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/03/film-restoration-in-the-digital-domain-a-chat-with-james-white.html

I generally don't like that fetishization of dated reproduction but I must say I'm a little attached to my washed out looking copy of Tokyo Fist, but I do want to see the remastered version someday because the stills looked great.

It is a good question, one that no doubt Tarantino and Rodriguez took onto consideration. Anyway, the copy of "Zombie" I watched certainly looked like shit, but I think it was ripped from the/a Blu Ray. Regardless, the problems I have with it, no degree of restoration would help. I don't like the acting, the writing, the camera work especially, basically everything technical and beyond that imo makes a movie "good." Like, I'd describe the first "Friday the 13th" movie as pretty "artless," too, and I even like that better than "Zombie." Just to bring up Argento again, or even Sergio Leone, something doesn't have to be perfect on all fronts to be a masterpiece. Those guys clearly put a lot of thought into every single shot of many of their films. But at least when it comes to "Zombie," it feels rushed and sloppy and half-assed, like it was made over a weekend (with an extra day of stolen NYC footage). "He's a director with an amazing eye, the camerawork by Sergio Salvati is frequently stunning," come on, not in this case. From the shaky gratuitous zooms into equally gratuitous piles of grue to the boring scenes of babbling people in between the almost randomly distributed set/shock pieces, I stand by my '70s porn comparison. Romero isn't the most artful of directors, either, but "Zombie" half-cousin "Dawn of the Dead" is Malick by comparison.

I suppose I like the set decoration of "Zombie" ok, so there's a plus, if you're into plates of rotting food and cluttered island hospitals.

No, I think lots of the shots in Zombie are excellent (the opening sequence on the boat with the fat zombie, or the splinter in the eye moment, have become iconic genre imagery), they're just not always framed or presented in the 'acceptable' style of dominant Hollywood cinema (though the way the zoom camera is used in Fulci and Franco movies has things in common with Altman's visual strategies in the 1970s). Fulci's best films are stylistically consistent and easily identifiable - they have an atmosphere that speaks to a unique European Gothic sensibility at work.