![]() ![]() The first and arguably best of producer Val Lewton‘s celebrated series of B-horror pictures, and the first of three he’d make with director Jacques Tourneur, “Cat People” doesn’t really feel like gothic horror at first blush. Oddly, he didn’t mention the Jan de Bont remake at all. Add in Wise’s sense of pace and the inventive cinematography from David Boulton (who used flawed, distorting lenses, high and low angles and eerie tracking shots throughout) and you understand why Martin Scorsese called this the scariest horror film of all time. ![]() Why them, and why especially, Nell (whose guilt over her mother’s death is raw and who has some sort of odd tragedy in her childhood), are enlisted is never really explained and really none of it makes a lick of sense, which possibly adds to its endlessly wrong-footing, uneasy approach. Markway ( Richard Johnson) wishes to explore it and recruits telepathically inclined beatnik lesbian Theo ( Claire Bloom), heir to the mansion Luke ( Russ Tamblyn) and neurotic, sheltered Nell ( Julie Harris) to accompany him. But what’s particularly of note here is that the existence of a supernatural entity is never really questioned: from the opening narration, we hear how Hill House was just built evil. 1963’s “The Haunting,” a black and white adaptation of the Shirley Jackson novel “ The Haunting of Hill House” was one instance: it’s a terrifically atmospheric movie, rich with the kind of psych-horror flourishes that gothic fiction revels in, many of which have their root in the emotional frailty of the lead character and her repressed inchoate sexual desires. ![]() That emotion is almost entirely grief, so amid the horror and scare tactics, many of which work to genuinely creepy effect, Bayona also delivers one of the most magnificently sad horror films in recent memory.ĭirector Robert Wise‘s career was so eclectic -encompassing everything from “ The Sound of Music” and “ West Side Story” to “ The Day The Earth Stood Still” and the first ‘ Star Trek‘ movie- that he inevitably bumped up against the horror genre a couple of times. What’s so clever about “The Orphanage” is that, like “Pan’s Labyrinth” which it resembles in structure if not at all in style (it is contemporary, for one thing), is that the real and the supernatural co-exist brilliantly here, and the machinations of the plot are of secondary importance to the overarching emotional story that the characters, especially Rueda’s, undergo. Once there, her son Simon starts to see a little boy with a terrifying sackcloth mask, whom he befriends before mysteriously disappearing. Bayona‘s “The Orphanage” starring Belen Rueda as the mother and wife returning to the house where she was raised as an orphan. Arguably the best of these (rivalling del Toro’s own finest hours) is J.A. Most obviously, del Toro was central to the recent revival of atmospheric horror and ghost stories in Spanish-language films in a producing and executive producing capacity, helping shepherd a new generation of directors and ensuring their movies got the exposure that the GDT “brand” could bring. We may not be including any Guillermo del Toro-directed films in this ‘ Crimson Peak’-inspired list, but that doesn’t mean his presence isn’t felt in other ways.
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