Don't Look Now: (1973. dir: Nicholas Roeg) I'd be hard-pressed to think of a bolder one. The bulk of it is set in Venice, and not the pretty, touristy Venice we're used to seeing: this is the Venice after the season ends. You can practically smell the standing water, feel the moisture in your bones. This film changed my life when I saw it as a kid; you might say it scarred me. It was the first time the Yeatsian concept that following one's destiny might not always be to one's benefit ever occurred to me, and I trusted life less after that. The movie employs an easy pace, a slow build-up to a powerful climax, and has one of the most realistic sex scenes ever filmed, between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, both at high points in both their respective charms and creative powers.
The Uninvited: (1944. dir: Lewis Allen) This old-fashioned ghost story (based on a surprisingly engaging and sometimes shiver-inducing book by Dorothy Macardle) stands apart from today's horror because its tone is is so heartily, healthily English. A brother and sister (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) rent a house on the Cornwall coast then have to delve into its past to try and exorcise its ghosts. They're the kind of children-of-Churchill, we-survived-the-Blitz English folk that used to show up frequently onscreen, and that gives the movie a hardy, chin-up-through-hard-times, wisecracking tone which blunts the force of any true horror, but inspiring pessimism was not the point of the genre then so much as coaxing up pleasant shivers, as this does. It also dishes up a well-written mystery. The b&w cinematography is deep-velvet gorgeous; it won an Oscar, in fact. I was lucky enough to see this the first time on the big screen in an arthouse somewhere, and it's truly one of the more seductive haunted houses you'll ever see, with its vast windows overlooking rocky cliffs and crashing waves and its spiral staircase which all pets avoid. A real stunner.
Black Christmas: (1974. dir: Bob Clark) Wow. Talk about seminal. How did I go so long without seeing this? It's one of the great grandaddies of the slasher genre. Girls in a sorority are plagued by (truly chilling, even after all these years) violent, anonymous phone calls, and Christmas break becomes an adventure in horror. These girls are not interchangable; you care about them and really, really don't want them to die. The red herrings are well-placed and well-developed, and the ending is utterly chilling.
The Innocents: (1961. dir: Jack Clayton) I do not hesitate to call this one of the best horror films of all time, and better than the book it's based on (Henry James' Turn of the Screw). The elements are consummate: the richness of its chiaroscuro, the jaw-dropping mastery in the conjuring of the invisible world and the all-important, unanswered question: is it psychological, or ghostly? The use of silences, as when the drone of insects suddenly stops. The eerily precocious way these child actors (the incomparable Pamela Franklin and Martin Stephens from the Village of the Damned, aged eleven and twelve respectively) have about them, throwing long fingers of doubt across their apparent innocence. The ending is absolutely devastating every time I watch it. Full five stars, no question.
Dust Devil: (1992. dir: Richard Stanley) Ye gods. Flawed but fascinating. I think if Richard Stanley were to remake this every ten years, it would be the most fantastic experiment in filmmaking that the world has ever seen, but it HAS to be Richard Stanley, and he HAS to have full control over the project. Somebody with money and power, make it so. Meanwhile, in this original, "Director's-Cut" version, there are images which will stay seared into the fabric of my brain forever. The aftermath of the first murder, with our mythic antihero arranging the entire house into a gory but precise artwork of exact details in order to fulfill his ritual needs and prolong his life, for instance. And, again, when he falls in love with one of his potential victims, and the power of it manifests in far-off explosions and the skittering of objects across a table-top. It lacks unity, this film. I understand that its filming was problematic, the editing process more so, plagued with all manner of troubles, and you can feel it in the final product, but it's still a classic, deserving our continued attention.
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