Bag that weak, watered-down McGothic crap like Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Craft, these movies are the REAL rock.
1. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) - What? You haven't seen this!? Get thee to a video store! Click here to read more
2. Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) - Slip some Bauhuas or some Current 93 into your CD player, dim the lights, kick your combat boots up on your coffee table, cuddle up with your creep and feel their flesh crawl against yours. Click here to read more3. Vampyr (1932) - Supposedly inspired by the novella Carmilla, this simply astonishing film is actually more E.T.A. Hoffman than J.S. Le Fanu in that its preoccupation is less with vampires and more with blurring the tenuous line between reality and fantasy, the waking world and the shadowy realm of dreams. Taking a strong cue from the Surrealist and Dada movements, Carl Theodore Dryer here fashioned an unforgettable film that just might be the closest anyone has ever come to capturing a nightmare on celluloid.
4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) - Critics and audiences alike doubted that Frederic March - ostensibly a romantic comedy actor - could pull this complex dual role off. But pull it off he did, giving us the most memorable screen incarnations of Henry and Edward (the latter under heavy Neanderthal Man make-up) in Rouben Mamoulian's definitive rendition of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic.
5. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - Easily the best picture ever to come out of the legendary Universal monster movie stable and quite possibly the greatest horror film of all time. That rare instance of a sequel that's not only as good as the original, it blows its predecessor right out of the water. The brilliant, flamboyant James Whale did his 1932 Frankenstein one better by going back to the Mary Shelly's original novel, furthing humanizing the tragic Monster (played once again by the great Boris Karloff in an extraordinarily tender, deeply moving performance). Super sexy Elsa Lanchester plays two roles, appearing as Mary Shelley in the prologue and at the film's climax as the bone-chillingly beautiful Bride. Bride's beauty, wit, and style only seem to increase with age like a fine wine. One of the true, soaring classics of the genre and not to be missed under any circumstances. Click here for a full review.
6. La Belle et la Bette [aka. Beauty and the Beast] (1946) - Surrealist poet and multimedia artist Jean Cocteau captured something truly special here with his eye-popping version of the immortal myth. Starring the beautiful Josette Day as the virtuous Belle and Cocteau's lover Jean Marais in a dual role as the tormented Beast (in stunning make-up by the director himself!) and his handsome, cold-hearted rival. At the film's premiere, Marais' transformation into the Prince at the film's climax prompted a somewhat smitten Gretta Garbo to stand up and shriek "GIVE ME BACK MY BEAST!" Click here for a full review.7. Les Yeux Sans Visage [aka. The Eyes Without a Face, Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus] (1959) - Surprisingly poetic and emotionally stirring mad surgeon movie. A true buried treasure (justly regarded as a classic in some circles) that ushered in a slew of considerably less subtle imitators ( i.e. Jess Franco's The Awful Dr. Orlof) focusing on the more sadistic elements of the story. Plastic surgeon Pierre Brassuer skins helpless young women alive in attempts to restore the shattered face of his daughter, hauntingly portrayed in a wistul, elegant, heart-wrenching performance by Edith Scobb. Her features concealed behind a mask, Scobb manages to convey oceans of emotion equipped only with her sad, soulful eyes. Click here for a full review.
8. Psycho (1960) - Director Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter Joe Stefano (adapting the novel by Robert Bloch) Americanized the Gothic with this slick, shuddery masterpiece inspired by the hideous crimes of American ghoul Ed Gein.9. Black Sunday (1961) - Cinematographer turned director Mario Bava made this touchstone giallo, single-handedly ushering in a new style of European horror, equal parts ghostly Gothic and sadistic Grand Guignol. Queen of the scream queens Barbara Steele plays the dual role of witch bitch vampire Princess Asa Vajda and pure-hearted maiden Katia in a seductive dance of revulsion and attraction. From the ominous opening scene (in which Vajda has the spiked Mask of Satan hammered into her face) to the delerious climax, this beauty maintains a relentlessly dark atmosphere from beginning to end. Click here for a full review.
10. Masque of the Red Death (1964) - The inimitable Roger Corman, "King of the Bs", displayed his arty streak with a strong string of colorful Poe adaptations, starting with House of Usher and culminating with this Ingmar Bergman inspired gem based on Poe's spine-tingling prose poem about wicked Prince Prospero, his noble guests, and a certain crimson clad party crasher... With striking cinematography by future director Nicholas Roeg and the Poe short story "Hopfrog" cleverly worked into the plot, this one stands proudly at the head of the Corman/Poe films.
11. Dracula Prince of Darkness (1966) - I would be remiss if I didn't include at least one entry from the legendary Hammer Studios, the most prolific producers of Gothic horror films in history. Director Terrence Fisher and the great Christopher Lee returned after a seven year hiatus to deliver this exceptional sequel to Horror of Dracula, arguably the best al-around movie out of the entire lengthy series. Lee was the definitive Drac for my money - the one actor who not only looks like Stoker's character but captures perfectly his crystalline evil and sexually threatening aura - and here he cuts a fierce, bloody swath without uttering so much as a single word (although he does manage one memorable, vociferous hiss).
12. KIll Baby... Kill! (1966) - Personally, I think this is the very best film made by the one true cinematic master of the macabre, Mario Bava. A mild-mannered coroner arrives at a spooky German hamlet and discovers that the ghost of a witchy-looking little girl is driving the innocent townsfolk to commit suicide with her blood-freezing gaze. Eerie in the extreme! Click here for a full review.
13. Dance of the Vampires [aka. The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck] (1967) - Although he's not normally thought of as a horror film-maker, Roman Polanski has made some of the finest Gothic horror flicks ever made (i.e. Repulsion, Macbeth, Rosemary's Baby). Here he composed a true rarity: a horror comedy that effectively combines slapstick humor with some genuine chills. Think of a cross polination between a Hammer film and a Charly Chaplin short and you'll get the idea. Recently turned into a musical that premiered in Vienna.
14. Night of the Living Dead (1968) - SHOOT "EM IN THA HEAD!!! The quintessential modern horror film... made in Pittsburgh no less! The dear departed rise to gnosh on the flesh of the living! Yeah, well, they're dead they're... awl messed up. Shot for peanuts in ultra-creepy black and white, George Romero fashioned a sweat-inducing masterpiece that feels like a documentary about a nightmare.
15. Witchfinder General [aka. The Conqueror Worm] (1968) - An uncharacteristically un-hammy Vincent Price gave his finest performance here as notorious witch-hunter Mathew Hopkins, a really twisted bastard who terrorized the English countryside during the time of Cromwell. Considered shockingly violent and controversial at the time of its release, the gore seems quite mild by contemporary standards, and yet its power to unsettle and disturb the viewer with its potent images of sadism and heartless cruelty has gone relatively undiminished. Director Michael Reeves was to follow this up with The Oblong Box and was pegged by many to be horror's next big thing, but he tragically cut his promising life and career short by comitting suicide with a barbiturate overdose the following year. He was 25 years old.
16. Suspiria (1977) - The first in Dario Argento's proposed "Three Mothers" trilogy (the second installment is the also excellent Inferno), this is his biggest, glossiest and probably best film, offering liberal doses of his trademark stylized violence and swooping, serpentine camera-work. Doe-eyed American girl Jessica Harper moves into a German dance academy and quickly finds out that the place is over-run with evil! Hairy hands come smashing through windows! Maggots rain from the ceiling! Seeing eye dogs attack their masters! What could be behind all this mayhem? The pounding score by Goblin gives us more than a clue, when we hear a sinister voice croak: "WITCH!"
17. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) - Kraut doom and gloom king Werner Herzog's ominous re-make that comes close to out-doing the original in sheer, unadulterated Gothiness. Using the Murnau film as a springboard to explore the recurrent theme in all of his work: Futility, Herzog bombards the viewer with his usual images of running water and small furry animals. Klaus Kinksi plays a brooding, death yearning Count... and he's so naturally friggin' ugly he hardly needs any make-up to creep you out of your socks! Click here for a full review.
18. The Company of Wolves (1984) - Before directing the full-blooded big screen adaptation of Interview with the Vampire, Neil Jordan made his indelible mark on the genre with this bold, seethingly sensual exploration of the sexual subtexts lurking beneath the werewolf and Little Red Riding Hood legends. A young, pubescent girl goes to sleep and has a series of dreams (with stories within the dreams) about lycanthropes. Gothic rocker and performance artist Danielle Dax has a cameo in a particularly touching vignette about a lost werewolf-girl, while Terrance Stamp appears as the Devil in a Rolls Royce. Jordan managed to create an incredibly atmospheric, lush-looking movie on a miniscule budget of around $2 million dollars. Just remember: "Some wolves are hairy on the inside."
19. Hellraiser (1987) - Just when you thought that the British Gothic horror movie had gone the way of the Dodo bird, Clive Barker ressurected it with this balls-out, straight-faced, go-for-the-throat chiller about a little puzzle box that holds a lot of evil. Spawned a series of vastly inferior sequels and created a new Gothic/Industrial fashion trend - Cenobite chic (a fusion of Christian clerical and modern S&M fetish) - in the process.
20. Interview with the Vampire (1994) - Okay, Tom Cruise may not be your ideal Lestat or mine (my pick would be Julian Sands), but this is Louis de Pointe du Lac's story anyway and Brad Pitt (no relation to Ingrid) does an excellent job of conveying that character's deep regret and all-consuming sadness. The script (adapted by Ann Rice herself) captures the spirit of the novel while making a few minor changes (switching Louis' loss from a brother to a wife and child) that actually improves the dramatic impact of the story. Endowed with a big budget this time around, director Neil Jordan delivers a Hammer-style Gothic costume drama that doesn't shie away from the story's homosexual overtones or its subtexts of family drama, depression, and drug addiction.
