Horror picks for the month!

Eyes Without a Face
The first time I saw this was with my best friend Brian. We’d both heard that the film was a classic but didn’t know much about it, and he’d just picked up a used copy for cheap, so on one of our many Friday Night Movie Nights we decided to give it a shot. A surgeon dumps a body alongside a river, and from there we learn about his lover who has been disfigured, and the trouble he’s going through to find the perfect face for her. This face, of course, has to come from another woman. Part of the film’s unsettling power hinges a reveal, and Brian and I were becoming tense, and then…we got a phone call about a party. So went and got drunk. But we both thought about the movie all week and where we’d left off, and the next Friday we started from that point, and that unsettling tension returned immediately. The film doesn’t play down its absurd trappings, and works on every level beyond its horror trappings. (If it seems Hitchcockian, that’s because the two writers on the film were also responsible for Vertigo, written two years previous.)



The Haunting
The late, great Robert Wise, director of classics such as West Side Story and The Day Earth Stood Still, decided to take a stab at the horror genre with this adaptation of the great Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House. One of the most effective ghost stories in film history, the film finds Dr. Markway investigating a house with paranormal activity, accompanied by Luke, who is in line to inherit the house, and Theodora and Eleanor, who both respond to an ad searching for volunteers with previous paranormal experience. Eleanor stands as the film’s central character, and as the house seemingly comes alive, we are left questioning whether or not the events are actually occurring or are simply in Eleanor’s head, a concept lifted straight from the great Charlotte Perkins Gilman short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” published in 1892. Part of the magic of the film lies in the understated approach to the material and the fact that nothing is ever truly seen; we are only to privy to Eleanor’s experience, and with that, we experience her fright with her, only to watch this give way to the pleasure she feels in regards to the attention the house pays her. Still effective even now, as foreboding and atmospheric as one can hope for in their horror films.



Suspiria
An intense barrage of sound, shocking violence, and a great score by Italian prog band Goblin, Suspiria was a worldwide phenomenom upon its release in 1977, and its impact as a cinematic experience has not been lost over time. A young American ballet dancer, Suzy, travels to Germany to attend a ballet school in the woods, only to discover that it is run by a coven of witches. She watches as her schoolmates are viciously murdered in an attempt to open the gates of Hell, and Suzy has to do everything she can to escape. One of the most influential modern horror films, much of the film’s power comes from its elaborate murder set pieces, and the American slasher film would not exist were it not for the Italian giallos and horror films like Suspiria.



Repulsion
Intensely claustrophobic and unsettling, this film is a tough nightmare to wake up from. After first seeing this, I started telling my fellow film students to check it out if they have any interest in doing horror. Coincidentally, a teacher/friend of mine decided to show it to one of his classes, and everyone hated it because it was too much. Young Catherine Deneuve isolates herself in her sister’s apartment when the sister goes on vacation, and we watch her fears manifest themselves in the apartment, causing Deneuve’s mental deterioration. In the end she is completely broken, and so are we.



Evil Dead II
One of my all time favorites, and one of the biggest cult classics from the late 80s, seeing this at 14 was an absolute revelation for me. As much inspired from the low-budget horror and exploitation of the late 70s/early 80s as it was by writer/director Sam Raimi’s love for the slapstick of the Three Stooges, the film seemingly threw all the rules out the window and decided to just have fun. Bruce Campbell, a cult icon of his own because of this film, stars as Ash, who arrives at a cabin in the woods with his girlfriend, only to accidentally play back a recording of an archaeological who had found the Necronomicon that releases an evil spirit in the woods, possessing first his girlfriend and then him. And then his hand. Which he has to cut off and replace with a chainsaw to ward off the evil spirits. Then the daughter of the archaeologist arrives with her boyfriend and their white trash two truck driver. “All hell breaks loose,” you might say, as they try to avoid being sucked into a dark dimension, and as we laugh all the way.



--co