Every year I love reading bloggers’ suggestions for 24-hour horror marathons to celebrate Halloween. I usually sketch out one of my own – to make time pass while languishing at work. So this year I’m presenting my own suggested programming for a 24-hour marathon; and who knows, maybe I’ll even have the guts to sit through it…
6AM: Viy
While you have the coffee brewing, drop in this classic Russian fantasy, adapted from a short story by Nikolai Gogol. It may at first seem to be a simple folktale, with some charmingly goofy special effects, but the film’s justifiably famous second half is the reason this makes such perfect Halloween viewing: a boy (Leonid Kuravlyov) is challenged to spend three straight nights beside the body of a beautiful young woman (Natalya Varley) to pray for her soul’s salvation, though he knew her to be a witch while she lived. And each night the possessed girl rises to attack the boy, summoning black magic and living gargoyles, while he does his level best to fend her off. A favorite among fans of the macabre.
Year: 1967
Country: Russia
Running Time: 77 minutes
Full Midnight Only Review
Availability: DVD; YouTube
7:20AM: The Wolf Man
I like to start my Halloween viewing early with a Universal classic, to remind myself of where my interest in horror began. The Wolf Man is one of my favorites, rich with atmosphere and boasting one of Lon Chaney Jr.’s greatest performances. Bela Lugosi has a small but significant role as “Bela.” One of the most affecting of the Universal classics.
Year: 1941
Country: U.S.
Running Time: 70 minutes
Availability: Netflix Instant Streaming; Amazon Instant Video; Blu-Ray; DVD
8:30AM: The Mummy
Originally I was going to stick Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) here, but on second thought, let’s skip ahead to Hammer Films and their first wave of monster classics. Peter Cushing shines as John Banning, Egyptologist, with Christopher Lee as the Mummy, Kharis, and the beautiful Yvonne Furneaux as his reincarnated love (a plot recycled from earlier Universal mummy pictures). Director Terence Fisher is at the top of his game, and the scene in which Lee suddenly charges through a window continues to be surprising.
Year: 1959
Country: U.K.
Running Time: 88 minutes
Availability: Amazon Instant Video; DVD; Blu-Ray (Region 2)
10AM: Race with the Devil
Next we take a vacation in the desert with Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit, Lara Parker, and their spiffy new mobile home. An accidental encounter with a gang of black-cloaked Satanists enacting a dark ritual leads to a nighttime chase. They think they’ve finally shaken their pursuers, but over the course of the following day, ominous clues indicate they’re being followed. Only in the 70’s could the occult be so perfectly matched with yee-haw car chases on dusty back roads.
Year: 1975
Country: U.S.
Running Time: 88 minutes
Full Midnight Only Review
Availability: Amazon Instant Video; DVD
11:30AM: The Devil’s Rain
I consider Robert Fuest’s The Devil’s Rain to be the stealth sequel to Race with the Devil. If you found the abrupt ending of the prior film unsatisfying, just pretend that The Devil’s Rain picks up where it left off, and concerns the same cult, which of course – as we learn now – is led by Ernest Borgnine. It’s left to William Shatner, his brother Tom Skerritt, Skerritt’s psychic wife Joan Prather, and Eddie Albert to destroy the Satanists once and for all. Their evil ranks include a briefly-glimpsed John Travolta.
Year: 1975
Country: U.S.
Running Time: 86 minutes
Full Midnight Only Review
Availability: DVD
1PM: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
As a kid, I used to watch this made-for-TV movie every October. It’s largely vanished since the 80’s, but it’s turned up on YouTube, so I’m considering revisiting it this year. Jeff Goldblum is ideally cast as Ichabod Crane – a more accurate version of Washington Irving’s original character than the supernatural-crime-solving hero of the current Sleepy Hollow TV series. Meg Foster is Katrina Van Tassel and ex-line backer Dick Butkus is Brom Bones.
Year: 1980
Country: U.S.
Running Time: 104 minutes
Availability: YouTube
2:45PM: Castle of the Walking Dead
Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel, also known as The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, is an eye-popping little horror film, filmed on a low budget but managing some hallucinatory sets. Essentially the loosest-possible adaptation of “The Pit and the Pendulum,” it concerns a resurrected Count – played by none other than Christopher Lee – who seeks revenge for past crimes, drawing a young couple into his nightmarish castle. In one scene, the standard-issue carriage ride through a spooky forest to the menacing castle is enlivened by surrealistic imagery, such as body parts protruding from trees. Karin Dor, the femme fatale of the same year’s You Only Live Twice, here plays the damsel in distress. Seek it out!
Year: 1967
Country: West Germany
Running Time: 85 minutes
Availability: DVD; YouTube
4:15PM: Thriller: “Pigeons from Hell”
Boris Karloff introduces this hair-raising segment of his Thriller TV series, which adapts a rather brutal ghost story from Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard. An abandoned Southern plantation forms the setting for this tale of vengeance from beyond the grave. This is pretty edgy stuff for 1961 television.
Year: 1961
Country: U.S.
Running Time: 50 minutes
Full Midnight Only Review
Availability: DVD; YouTube
5:05PM: Halloween III: Season of the Witch
It wasn’t until last year that I finally got around to watching Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Despite its reputation as being the flop of the Halloween series, in fact it’s a clever film (with a story by Quatermass Xperiment author Nigel Kneale) that abandons the old Michael Myers plotline for a science fiction-themed story about the origins of the holiday – and its corruption into contemporary commercial marketing. Dan O’Herlihy plays a corporate madman who plans to kill children with Halloween masks (!). The cinematography is by frequent John Carpenter collaborator Dean Cundey, who helps give the film an eerie Prince of Darkness feel. This was intended to kick off a series of non-Michael Myers Halloween sequels, but its box office failure meant that it would soon be back to (tired) formula.
Year: 1982
Country: U.S.
Running Time: 98 minutes
Availability: Blu-Ray; DVD; Amazon Instant Video
6:45PM: The Haunting
As far as I’m concerned, this is the definitive haunted house movie. A somewhat faithful adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, the film, as directed by Robert Wise, places you almost claustrophobically inside the mind of sheltered wallflower Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris, who just passed away this year), as she tags along on an investigation of Hill House’s paranormal activity led by the handsome Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson). Claire Bloom and a very funny Russ Tamblyn round out the crew of inadequate investigators. All these decades later, the film can still provoke a powerful feeling of dread.
Year: 1963
Country: U.S.
Running Time: 112 minutes
Availability: Blu-Ray; DVD; Amazon Instant Video
8:45PM: Kill, Baby, Kill
Kill, Baby, Kill is a simple Gothic ghost story with all the trappings (castle + frightened villagers, check), but Mario Bava uses this basic template for an exercise in spellbinding style. Increasingly, the film becomes more and more dream-like, leading to one mind-bending (and much-imitated) sequence in which a man can’t seem to leave a room, no matter how many times he exits the door. An apparent influence on Fellini’s acclaimed “Toby Dammit” segment of Spirits of the Dead (1968).
Year: 1966
Country: Italy
Running Time: 83 minutes
Availability: Netflix Streaming; Amazon Instant Video; Redbox Instant; DVD
10:15PM: The Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
Brian DePalma’s rock musical is one DVD that never gathers dust on my shelf for very long. The songs by Paul Williams – who plays the Phil Spector-like impresario Swan – rank among his best work, sending up then-fashionable trends in pop music with plenty of digs at the business’ sell-outs and charlatans. DePalma regular William Finley is the nerdy Winslow, who transforms into the Phantom of the Paradise. Suspiria‘s Jessica Harper is perfectly cast as Phoenix, the wide-eyed ingenue with the gorgeous voice (Harper’s own) who falls under Swan’s wing. DePalma squeezes in plenty of parodies of famous film moments, from Touch of Evil‘s opening tracking shot to Psycho‘s shower scene. Many fans believe this is superior to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Which means…
Year: 1974
Country: U.S.
Running Time: 91 minutes
Full Midnight Only Review
Availability: DVD; Amazon Instant Video
12AM: The Rocky Horror Picture Show
…Why not judge for yourself by scheduling the two most famous horror-musicals ever made back-to-back? Tara Lynne Barr said in Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America (2011) that Glee ruined Rocky Horror for everyone. Certainly the film has become appropriated by popular culture and made a little too familiar, but there’s still some real transgressive (and transgendered) punch to the film, which – long ago, it seems – was withheld from home video release so the curious “virgins” would have to see it at their local midnight screening, with all the freaks and their props. Richard O’Brien’s music is great; Tim Curry is great; Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Meat Loaf, Charles Gray, and all the rest hold their own. Sure, it would have been better if Brian DePalma directed it, but the film holds up as a solid musical even without the crowd. This counts as the “Halloween Party” portion of the marathon.
Year: 1975
Country: U.K.
Running Time: 100 minutes (unedited British version)
Availability: Blu-Ray; DVD; Amazon Instant Video
1:40AM: The Shiver of the Vampires
Jean Rollin’s movies, with their hypnotic rhythms, copious nudity, and sedate line-readings from surreal scripts, should be watched late into the night for maximum effect. I consider The Shiver of the Vampires to be the pinnacle of his vampire series, and a great entry-point for those new to his oeuvre. Newlyweds stay in a castle ruled by a female vampire, who creeps out of a clock at the stroke of a midnight (or, in one scene, out of a fireplace, like Santa Claus). While the husband fumbles about in the Wonderland of a castle – replete with a library that attacks you, and two vampire hunters who talk like Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee – his wife is seduced and bitten by the vampiress, and begins wearing sunglasses during the day.
Year: 1971
Country: France
Running Time: 95 minutes
Full Midnight Only Review
Availability: Blu-Ray; DVD
3:15AM: The Church
This Dario Argento-scripted film, at one point intended to be titled Demons 3, makes about zero sense, but that’s OK – it’s 3:15 in the morning, and you’re not likely to notice. I still admire the film. Director Michele Soavi, who would later give us the cult hit Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man, 1994), directs the film as an extended homage to Argento after having served as his assistant director on Tenebre (1982) and Phenomena (1985); he also manages to work in explicit references to Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Boris Vallejo. Argento’s daughter Asia plays a teenager living in the catacombs of an ancient cathedral that was built to seal away evil forces. When that seal is broken by a professor, a host of tourists and visitors become trapped inside, to be possessed by demons or murdered in gruesome ways. The fantastic soundtrack features Keith Emerson, Goblin, and Philip Glass. The final frame of the final shot is a particular favorite of mine: a wicked little touch of subtlety that I attribute to Soavi (Argento wouldn’t be capable of anything subtle).
Year: 1989
Country: Italy
Running Time: 102 minutes
Availability: DVD
5AM: Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn
Just as The Church ends, it seems like the demon action was just picking up, so a screening of Evil Dead II will not just continue the crazy occult action, but may be the only film capable of keeping you awake at this point. Watch Sam Raimi transform into “Sam Raimi” as Bruce Campbell fires up the Deadite-slaying chainsaw in his cabin in the woods.
Year: 1987
Country: U.S.
Running Time: 84 minutes
Availability: Blu-Ray; DVD; Amazon Instant Video; Redbox Instant
6:25AM: Fantasia: “Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria”
Well, it seems like this “mix tape” of a marathon has found a frequently recurring theme of devils and demons. Since the sun will be rising soon, this final selection – the last stretch of Disney’s Fantasia – will ward off all the spirits summoned for Halloween, to slumber for another year. This is Walt Disney at his finest. What at first appears to be the peak of Bald Mountain suddenly opens up to reveal it’s the folded wings of the demon Chernabog. After the devils and ghosts revel and burn (you’ll note there’s some nudity here as well, which would never appear in a modern Disney animated film), Fantasia transitions from Mussorgsky to Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” and a technologically innovative use of the multi-plane camera for one very long tracking shot, creating the illusion of extraordinary depth as the sun rises and holy lights stride through a cathedral of trees. These segments were later excerpted for Disney’s 50’s television series, and I think Walt liked showing them off. It should make for a fitting end for our 24 (or 24 & 3/4) hours of horror.
Year: 1940
Country: U.S.
Running Time: 14 minutes
Availability: Blu-Ray; DVD; YouTube
