It’s become my annual tradition to recommend 24 hours’ worth of horror films for your Halloween viewing – understanding, of course, that you can just pick what seems interesting to you and not actually indulge in the full 24 hours (because why would you? I’ve tried it and it hurts). This year I’ve attempted to choose films which are readily available, many of them in brand new Blu-Rays that come highly recommended, and I’m sure many are available streaming as well.
6am – The Maze (1953) D: William Cameron Menzies
Menzies, the famous production designer whose work lent spectacular settings to The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and Gone with the Wind (1939), directed this unusual Gothic horror film which was released the same year as his better known picture, Invaders from Mars. Both are dreamlike in approach, though The Maze separates itself by being filmed and released in 3-D, a factor which can now be appreciated by modern audiences with Kino’s 2018 3-D/2-D Blu-ray featuring a restoration by the 3-D Film Archive. Richard Carlson, who also headlined the 3-D films Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came from Outer Space, is summoned back to his Scottish family’s estate after the death of the baronet, and abruptly cuts off contact with his fiancé, Kitty (Veronica Hurst). When she goes looking for him, she finds that the castle servants lock the guest doors at night and don’t permit anyone to enter its sprawling hedge maze. Unraveling this mystery leads to a bizarre revelation that wouldn’t be out of place in an old issue of Weird Tales (it’s based on a novel by the surrealistically inclined Maurice Sandoz). The film is flawed – at 88 minutes it feels too long for such a slight tale (it even has an intermission!), and the climax might be too bonkers for most – but its thick Gothic atmosphere and vertically stretched production design make The Maze a memorably eerie, left-field kick-off to Halloween viewing.
7:30am – Evil of Dracula (1974) D: Michio Yamamoto
From a very American Scotland we’re off to a very European Japan in this, the last film in director Michio Yamamoto’s loose trilogy of vampire pictures inspired by Mario Bava and Hammer horror; rather than presenting the traditional Eastern “hopping” vampire, these vamps are very much in the Christopher Lee mold. Struck through with gorgeous colors, Yamamoto’s films could be easily appreciated with the sound turned off, allowing one to relish the spooky landscapes and bright splashes of blood. Evil of Dracula has as much “Dracula” as its predecessor, Lake of Dracula (1971) – which is to say none – but it does present a Bram Stoker-ish plot of fast-spreading vampirism, nocturnal visits (in this case, to a girls’ dorm room), and creative stakings. This film also amps up the lurid exploitation elements from the other, more stately films in the series. All three are now available on Blu-Ray from Arrow as The Bloodthirsty Trilogy.
9am – The ’Burbs (1989) D: Joe Dante
In recent years it seems that more and more have come around to The ’Burbs, with many critics and fans now regarding it as Joe Dante’s finest hour. Me, I loved it from the start – when I first caught it in the theater – and I’ve been quoting it ever since. It’s perfect Halloween viewing, though the sinister/supernatural elements are kept deliberately dubious for most of its running time: that is, whether or not Tom Hanks and Carrie Fisher’s next door neighbors the Klopeks are a suburban Leatherface-style clan of killers, or if they just exercise poor lawn maintenance. Hanks has never been funnier.
10:45am – Night of the Demon (1957) D: Jacques Tourneur
There’s never been a better time to revisit the classic Night of the Demon (aka Curse of the Demon) now that a decked-out and region-free special edition is now available from the unimpeachable British label Indicator. Tourneur directed some of producer Val Lewton’s best horror films as well as the film noir milestone Out of the Past, and Night of the Demon, based on a supernatural tale by M.R. James, blends the two genres as though they belonged together, even importing the great noir star Dana Andrews (Laura, Where the Sidewalk Ends) to investigate what is beyond conventional investigation: an occult mystery with a black magic practitioner (Niall MacGinnis) and a horrible curse.
12:30pm – The Night of the Werewolf (1981) D: Paul Naschy
This monster mash from Spain’s prolific horror star Paul Naschy has him once again playing the Wolf Man Waldemar Daninsky, but this time he’s facing off against the blood-bathing Countess Elisabeth Bathory, freshly resurrected and spawning a plague of vampirism from beneath some castle ruins. Attractively photographed and with not a dull stretch in its 90 minutes, it’s one of the more entertaining films included in Scream Factory’s Paul Naschy Collection (Volume 1).
2pm – Hell Night (1981) D: Tom DeSimone
Scream Factory also recently released this little slasher gem, long unavailable. Linda Blair stars as a college student subjected to a sorority/fraternity hazing along with three others (including Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter’s Peter Barton): dressed in costumes, they must spend a night in a Gothic manor that’s stood empty since some grisly murders. Fellow students sneak around the property for some prank scares, but are killed off one by one instead. Director DeSimone goes lighter on the exploitation elements than expected (though a few of the kills are really something) and instead preps a climax that contains genuine surprises and real-deal suspense.
3:45pm – The Brood (1979) D: David Cronenberg
This is a very bizarre – and extremely Cronenbergian – thriller about Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed) and his unique “rage” therapy which manifests the emotion as physical lesions on the bodies of his patients. Around the same time that Frank (Art Hindle, aka the 70’s Greg Kinnear) loses contact with his wife Nola (Samantha Eggar) to Raglan’s woodland clinic, a series of murders are enacted by mutant children on his friends and family. The most outrageous of these takes place at a preschool(!). The finale is tense, disturbing, and even a bit nauseating, yet there’s no denying a strong satirical edge that makes the whole film seem more like black comedy in retrospect.
5:30pm – Phantom of the Paradise (1974) D: Brian De Palma
There’s never a good reason not to watch Phantom of the Paradise again, the musical horror comedy featuring a Paul Williams songbook and Williams himself as Swan, a Phil Spector-like pop impresario. De Palma regular William Finley plays Winslow Leach, who becomes the Phantom after a freak accident at a record-pressing plant and some sinister dentistry in Sing-Sing. But his mission of revenge against Swan is quickly upended by Swan’s own (literally) devilish schemes. Jessica Harper is their mutual muse, the naïve singer Phoenix. This will be the first part of a Jessica Harper double feature, because coming up next is…
7:15pm – Suspiria (1977) D: Dario Argento
…Dario Argento’s colorful leap from giallo into supernatural horror, which received a fresh spotlight on its 40th anniversary last year in a gorgeous restoration from Synapse Films (available on Blu-Ray). Now it’s in the spotlight again with the remake about to be released, and in which Harper has a cameo. In the original she is Suzy Bannion, an American ballet student investigating mysterious incidents in a German ballet school. Witch! Everything that can be said about this classic has already been said, so just bask in the original quadrophonic soundtrack restored on the Blu-Ray, and its colors that pierce like a plunging knife.
9pm – From Beyond the Grave (1974) D: Kevin Conner
Hammer rival Amicus produced a long series of horror anthologies beginning in the mid-60’s with the delightful Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), and this was their last (although Amicus co-founder Milton Subotsky would go on to produce a few more horror anthologies on his own). It also might be the studio’s best. Peter Cushing stars as the owner of an antiques shop who is visited by a handful of unscrupulous customers; the misfortune that befalls each one forms the tales themselves, all adapted from stories by R. Chetwynd-Hayes. The quality of the source material really elevates the film, and the performances by Donald Pleasence and his daughter Angela make the segment “An Act of Kindness” worth the price of admission alone.
10:45pm – Night of the Demons (1988) D: Kevin Tenney
Unrelated to Night of the Demon, Night of the Demons follows a group of teenagers trapped in “Hull House” (unrelated to Hill House – or the House on Haunted Hill, for that matter) and battling demons on one long Halloween night. Tenney’s clever, gory, and fun Halloween party of a movie, chock full of inventive practical effects, inspired a mini-franchise, with sequels and a remake. I actually slightly prefer Night of the Demons 2 (1994), but it’s hard to top the holiday spirit of the original.
12:15am – Freaks (1932) D: Tod Browning
One of the first films to be booked in revival for midnight screenings, the taboo-busting, Pre-Code Freaks continued Browning’s obsession with circuses and sideshows – and earned instant notoriety. What is so fascinating about the film today is that it spends the majority of its running time providing an unflinching look at (real) circus “freaks” and allowing them to tell their own story, so to speak: the film is told largely from their point of view, killing time between shows, fraternizing, smoking, playing cards, joking around. It feels like a documentary, in large part because these are not professional actors, and Browning is filming them in their own element and with surprising sensitivity. Only gradually does a narrative begin to emerge, as a dwarf, Hans (Harry Earles), allows his relationship with another dwarf (Daisy Earles) to crumble when he falls for Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), a trapeze artist. Cleopatra is only using him as the butt of a joke – until she learns that he has a fortune in his name. In the final reel, Browning finally lets his sympathetic melodrama turn into a horror show – and he goes all out, to the extent that some of the harsher material was removed after initial release, and has never been recovered. Is it thus, in the end, only exploitation? You can decide for yourself, but it’s sensational filmmaking.
1:20am – Simon, King of the Witches (1971) D: Bruce Kessler
This isn’t much of a horror film, but at this hour it’s time for something a little different. Nothing scary happens in Simon, King of the Witches, and even the promised black magic is often sidelined in favor of scams and earthly opportunism. But that’s kind of the point – Kessler’s film follows a modern-day warlock (Andrew Prine), living in an urban sewer system that frequently floods, who attempts to climb the social ladder by peddling his charms to the upper crust. There’s a little bit of sex magic (in which the sex is just as important to Simon as the magic), some hucksterism, political corruption, and a bit of biting satire as Simon maneuvers through new social circles, either welcomed as a hippie savant or sarcastically dismissed. Simon’s climactic spell is rendered as a mind-melting attempt to top 2001’s trip through the stargate!
3am – House (1977) D: Nobuhiko Ǒbayashi
I’ve written about this film twice for this website now, and if you’re reading this you’ve probably seen it (Criterion released it, for God’s sake), but if you haven’t – this is what you need in your system, stat. And since it’s filling in the ungodly 3am slot in our 24 hour marathon, it may be the only thing that could possibly keep you awake. It is, in a word, madness. It’s a haunted house movie as a live action cartoon, with decapitations and dismemberment, left-field gags, special effect techniques that have never been attempted before and never would again (probably for good reason), all accompanied by a melody that will never leave your head. And by the time it’s over and our Halloween marathon has concluded, your brain will be dripping out of your ears, but you’ll have a smile on your face.
