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

About the boy?

yup

I would have also accepted "a young time traveling Chloe Svegniy" as an answer

Svegniy = a misspelling which I fear will now become persistent for me

much like 'detrius'

haha sorry

a trio of Shaw Brothers.

BEWITCHED

Boxer's Omen is the sequel to this much weaker film. It's one of the most reactionary horror films I've seen and even explicitly states at the end that it's a warning against casual sex. It's about a Thai girl who places a curse on a Hong Kong man for not returning to her, the curse makes him kill his own child.
The Magic rituals are quite fun and more extensive than other similar films.

MIGHTY PEKING MAN

A ripoff of the 70s King Kong, but with more nudity (a German actress playing a jungle girl), funny looking special effects and alarming use of animals. It's huge for a Hong Kong film of the time but they really struggle to pull off most of the special effects. You could pick holes in it all day but it's become a classic of a sort. I don't like it much.

Here's a few things that keep it interesting, but usually not in a good way:
- An Indian guy wrestles with a real tiger.
- Some Hong Kong actors dress up as Indians, but they don't even go full blackface (brownface?), they just smear themselves in patches of brown.
- The part that leaves the worst taste in my mouth: at some points when the two main stars interact with them, the mouths of the leopard and tiger look stitched closed and you see them cringing. I'm guessing their claws might have been removed too because the German actress cuddles, swings and spins the leopard on her shoulders. You'd think it was heavily drugged but it walks around fine. These scenes of her spinning and swinging the leopard look hilarious until you dwell on the mouth stitching and whatever they may have did to assure the stars would not be clawed to death.
I was annoyed that the otherwise highly observant commentary and sleeve notes didn't seem to notice any of this.
- Elephants look like they're getting shot.

OILY MANIAC

The Malaysian Orang Minyak may be the most disturbing legend I've heard of because it's been said rapes are blamed on it and rapists might have even dressed as this creature.

Oily Maniac is a heroic version of the legend that kills rapists and other criminals. It's quite fun to see the ways in which the hero covers himself in oil to transform into the oil monster but I think this is a weak film. It uses a ripoff of the Jaws theme music whenever the oil monster travels in puddle form, it's used way too much.

It's probably my least favourite film in the recent Shaw Brothers remasters but the documentary and sleeve notes are very interesting. Notes take several quotes from Iain Robert Smith's The Hollywood Meme: Transnational Adaptations in World Cinema (which is very expensive).

Here's the blurb of that book.

Did you know that a Turkish remake of The Exorcist replaced the Catholicism with Islam? Or that James Bond and Batman team up together in the 1966 Filipino film James Batman? Or that a Bollywood remake of Memento has become one of the biggest box-office successes in India of all time?
The Hollywood Meme is the first comprehensive study of the transnational adaptations of Hollywood movies that have appeared throughout world cinema. With case studies from the film industries of Turkey, India and the Philippines, Iain Robert Smith shows how reworked versions of Hollywood blockbusters like E.T., The Godfather, Spider-man and Star Wars can complicate prevailing accounts of Hollywood’s global impact, and help provide a new model for interrogating transnational flows and exchanges.

THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH

I thought I might have already seen this when I bought a bunch of 60s Italian Barbara Steele horror films years ago, they mostly blur together. I think it's new to me, but anyway, it is a lot like the others, quite dull but still got some basic enjoyment out of it.

THE SLAYER

A supernatural slasher on a beach. Nice setting but the characters get tiresome quickly, has some hackneyed dialogue like "this place gives me the creeps, I feel like I'm being watched". There's some fairly decent moments and the theme music is good (could have been from a lush rococo costume drama) but I didn't like it much.

Not a horror film but Mario Bava's Erik The Conqueror stands up well among his better films. I had mostly not bothered seeing his non-horror films but I might have to give more of them a chance.

Looking back I think Horrible Dr Hichcock is as good as any Bava except Black Sabbath. One of the few oldies which is still fucked up. I still think about the husband staring into space.

Glad I didn't bid more on ebay because Arrow's release of Black Sabbath is reprinted for December.

Also reprinted and released individually are the trio from the American Horror Project box set: Witch Who Came From The Sea, Malatesta's Carnival Of Blood and The Premonition.

Just saw the Criterion version of Carnival Of Souls in shops today (nice cover) and not willing to pay £18, anyone know what the deleted scenes are like?

I'm getting a little hesitant to buy things on bluray if I've already got them on dvd, because I'll feel like a chump if they're not that different. Also wondering which films might come out on bluray, to stay away from the current dvd version. Hoping Zeder will come soon.

I saw the Criterion Carnival of Souls years ago, and my memory of the deleted stuff is that there was a ton of it (like 30 minutes?) but it was just raw, unedited, mostly silent alt takes and alt shots. Just straight off the reel. Interesting in its own way, but not really even "scenes."

Yeah, the deleted stuff is purely ephemeral. The Criterion print is fairly gorgeous, though.

I watched the first half of Häxan last night, it aired on TCM & i had the foresight to DVR it

such a bizarre treasure of a movie.

Did it have the Burroughs narration? The original dialogue screens were a pain.

Intertitles I meant. They're just so persistent, that removing them and having Burroughs narrate made it a lot more enjoyable.

Do any of the streaming services, Shudder included, have much in the way of Hammer?

And by the way, had never seen "Black Sabbath" before, but it's on Filmstruck (with some other Bava) so watched most of it so far, and while The Telephone is dumb and seems like something bored kids would shoot in an afternoon, "The Wurdulak" is creepy as hell if equally obvious.

The last part is great too.

Three films and bunch of features. I'm not big into Amicus but after enjoying the commentary on Kung Fu Trailers Of Fury I'd kind of like to see the commentary on the Amicus trailer reel.

https://www.rue-morgue.com/severins-the-amicus-collection-brings-british-horror-classics-to-blu-ray/

Didn't realise those Universal Monsters legacy bluray box sets were in the UK now. Some of the films included are different from the dvd versions.

How so? Do you mean that the new sets are less comprehensive? Because the DVD sets include everything (to kind of a ridiculously comprehensive degree, as I believe the complete Universal Monsters DVD set includes three copies of House of Dracula and House of Frankenstein between the different Legacy sets in which it's included).

(in which they're included.)

The older sets didn't have overlapping contents.

I was so sure that the older legacy collections had a bunch of different additional monsters but on second check I can't see them.

I'm very curious about all the universal horror films that nobody talks about. I was tempted to buy the Jonathan Rigby guides (American Gothic, English Gothic and Euro Gothic) but his praise of some films made me think I won't trust his judgement.

I seem to almost always prefer the Universal horror films from that era which don't feature their roster of beastly superstars. I've watched The Invisible Ray and Black Friday this week (which are both more sci-fi than horror, tbf). Both Karloff/Lugosi joints, both a lot of fun (although the former spends a lot of time in Africa, which is thankfully slightly less problematic than it could've been for a film from the '30s but it doesn't dodge that bullet entirely).

Jeez, I found Invisible Ray one of the worst. Maybe I was just pissed Frances Drake wasn't featured more, as some of her fans led me to believe.

Would like to see Curse Of The Undead, a vampire western.

There's supposed to be a lot of old dark house comedies and I generally don't like them much.

I just want the Frankenstein and Dracula sets, for the settings.

I mean, let's be real: most of these golden age Universal horror flicks are trifles. Fun but ultimately pretty disposable. The two I've found the most legitimately interesting were the original The Black Cat and Dracula's Daughter.

I think Bride Of Frankenstein is genuinely good.

Yeah, the Whale Frankensteins are good. I take that as a given. Dracula...well, Dracula looks great, anyway. And it has Dwight Frye!

Having watched a lot of Universal horror over the last couple of years, I don't think much Universal stuff would make my top 10. Or probably even top 20. And I haven't even gotten around to some of the big guns yet (M! Vampyr!).

Oh! I forgot that The Old Dark House is Universal! That one is a delight, probably my favorite of the lot.

'Having watched a lot of '30s horror', I meant to say.

Someone made a retro old dark house comedy several years ago but I cant recall the name.

I was a bit underwhelmed by Vampyr but mine was an old copy and supposedly the remaster breathed a lot of life into it.

PREMATURE BURIAL

The 60s Corman/Poe film without Vincent Price. I think it's one of the better ones but a few things didn't make sense. Of all the solutions to get out the tomb, why didn't Milland make a key? Why didn't more of his friends and family try to wait longer before they buried him, after all that fuss?

The garden is really cool.

I might as well seek out Oblong Box now (Price/Poe without Corman).

I just bought a Corman set which includes that, X: the Man with X-Ray Eyes, and Bucket of Blood (among others). I need to do a proper 'Corman Presents Poe' marathon. Tales of Terror was pretty fun but I think it's the only one I've seen.

I watched The Old Dark House last night for the first time -- it's good! I got a laugh out of the Karloff/Massey brawl, thinking about Arsenic and Old Lace. Charles Laughton looks like a baby and still out-acts everyone else, except maybe Thesinger. Usually I dislike horror + comedy, but it works here; Whale doesn't beat you over the head with gags or musical cues and lets you decide for yourself whether a scene is funny or creepy. I gather a 4K restoration is in the works, but I was impressed with the image quality of the movie as shown on TCM, really sharp and clean for something from 1932.

Bucket Of Blood is funny, superior to the better known Little Shop Of Horrors.

Pit And The Pendulum, Haunted Palace* and Premature Burial are my top 3. House Of Usher, Tomb Of Ligeia and Masque Of The Red Death are a bit weaker. Tales Of Terror is my least favourite. The Raven is complete comedy and is occasionally funny.

I'd be careful about watching them too close together because they're all very similar and recycle a lot of things far too much. None of them are properly great so you really need to like this stuff to have the patience for them all. Maybe I need to rewatch Usher because Pit was very different from how I remembered.

*Really a Lovecraft film with a Poe title and if I remember correctly, a black cat (you could pretend it was Lovecraft's infamously named cat).

And if you wanted something similar, Mansion Of Madness is not bad.

My two favourite Poe screen adaptations are the short animated Tell Tale Heart and the short Watson/Webber Fall Of The House Of Usher. You can probably still get them on youtube.

CAPTAIN CLEGG

Bought this for Yvonne Romain and wasn't expecting much else going on but it's quite good. The horror elements are minor, it's really a film about smugglers, but there isn't much time spent at sea. The matte paintings are great and I wish they had used those phantoms of the marshes as a real supernatural threat in another film.

An adaptation of Russell Thordike's Dr Syn books. Star Peter Cushing contributed costume designs but didn't get his version of the script through.

I put film titles in capital letters for anyone skimming through this thread and a space after for neatness but I'm going to stop that because I feel like I'm putting people off from posting here. Maybe it looks loud and like I'm waving my limbs around the space?

If you wanted to be really complete about that Corman/Poe cycle, you might as well throw in The Terror, which has nothing to do with Poe but the style is completely the same as those other films, and has the not-quite-dead wife trope. Jack Nicholson and Karloff.

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (James Whale, 1932; the Cohen Film Collection restoration, aired on TCM on 10/31/17). I like best the sort of horror that recognizes that average human beings (as opposed to infernal or supernatural beings) can be the truest monsters. Quibble: Melvyn Douglas sounds disconcertingly (to my ears at least) like Edward Everett Horton.

A PAGE OF MADNESS (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926; rewatch with live accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra). I go back and forth on this one. If it contained the intertitles common to the period, would we recognize the narrative most viewers extract from it (and would we appreciate it as much if we didn't have to make that effort)? On the other hand, I keep linking this to Un Chien Andalou, as an exercise in screwing around with the Kuleshov effect.

I'm glad y'all are seeing The Old Dark House! But I'm mystified that no one is commenting on the 'father' of the clan! Such an odd and inexplicable but also brilliant casting choice.

I've been watching so many old movies lately and realizing that Boris Karloff is in like 3/5 of them. I really love him a lot. I watched the completely ludicrous The Ape this weekend, wherein a man-killing gorilla gets loose from the circus and is subsequently killed by Karloff, who then runs around wearing the dead gorilla like a costume and killing people and extracting their spinal fluid for scientific experiments. I mean...wut.

Also watched the original Phantom of the Opera. Lon Chaney was amazing. I still can barely fathom how he did that to his face.

I listened to a bit of that Boris and Bela series of episodes of You Must Remember This podcast. Some fascinating information in there (Lugosi dating Clara Bow, the roles their Hungarian and part Indian heritage got them) but I just couldn't get on with the very slow reading and constant adverts.

My theory on her reading cadence is that it's a necessary evil because of how long and unwieldy her sentences are to read off the page.

Those Bollywood Horror collections cost a fortune now. I think they were exclusively films by the Ramsay brothers. A lot of them are on youtube but usually in the wrong aspect ratio. The films don't look very good but architecture in some of them really impresses me.

Circus Of Horrors - Early 60s British horror about a dastardly plastic surgeon who owns a circus, gives makeovers to facially scarred beautiful women and gets them to perform in his circus, but he kills them when they endanger him. It's not bad.
Cast includes Donald Pleasance, Yvonne Romain and Yvonne Monlaur (who died in April, I just discovered).

The Black Castle - 50s gothic adventure film set in 18th century, which I'm not sure would qualify as a swashbuckler because it doesn't really have much swordfighting. It's not bad.
Karloff and Chaney Jr in supporting roles.

Behind the Door (Irvin Willat, 1919). Wartime atrocities better not disqualify a movie from the horror genre, because I'm going to discuss it here. Certainly by the time Hobart Bosworth has Wallace Beery in irons on his ship, Bosworth seems suitably unhinged. And the reference to Beery's fate is a perfect illustration of the principle that what you don't see on screen can be all the more powerful.

I saw this in a double bill with Prix de Beaute (Augusto Genina, 1930) and am in desperate need of comedy and happy endings.