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When cinephiles of a certain sensibility talk about the best decades for horror, they’ll probably point to the 1980s with its explosion of cutting-edge special effects and home video-induced demand for material. Or they might point to the era of Universal Pictures’ domination in the 1930s, followed up then by the moody Val Lewton thrillers of the 1940s. Maybe even a very unpopular kid will try to make an argument for the 2010s, at least until everyone pulls the A24 hat over his eyes and kicks him out.

But moviegoers would be foolish to overlook the 1960s. The decade saw not only two amazing horror flicks from Alfred Hitchcock but also caught the genre in an interesting time of transition. Filmmakers built on the Gothic approach of previous decades by adding a psychological dimension, finding new chills in an established model. Furthermore, the decade saw the first steps toward the ho,...

Presenting murderous moppets on screen is always a dicey proposition. For every The Bad Seed or The Omen, there is always The Good Son or Mikey skulking about. It’s all about the fear – making a five or ten year old believably frightening is hard to do. As audience members, we put our faith in filmmakers to produce tension, conflict, and danger in a palpable (but not necessarily plausible) way, and when it’s tested we end up wading through Children of the Corn. But when our faith is rewarded, we find ourselves in the Village of the Damned (1960), a seminal killer kid chiller.

Based on the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, Village was produced by MGM’s British division and distributed there in July, with a December rollout in the States. The film was a great success, both with critics and audiences alike, luring them in with...

Hell's Kitchen: Soul stew image likely from the 1922 Benjamin Christensen horror classic 'Häxan / Witchcraft Through the Ages.' Day of the Dead post: Cinema's Top Five Scariest Living Dead We should all be eternally grateful to the pagans, who had the foresight to come up with many (most?) of the overworked Western world's religious holidays. Thanks to them, besides Easter, Christmas, New Year's, and possibly Mardi Gras (a holiday in some countries), we also have Halloween, All Saints' Day, and the Day of Dead. The latter two are public holidays in a number of countries with large Catholic populations. Since today marks the end of the annual Halloween / All Saints' Day / Day of the Dead celebrations, I'm posting my revised and expanded list of the movies' Top Five Scariest Living Dead. Of course, by that I don't mean the actors listed below were dead when the movies were made.

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20. The Innocents

Directed by Jack Clayton

Written by William Archibald and Truman Capote

UK, 1961

Genre: Hauntings

The Innocents, which was co-written by Truman Capote, is the first of many screen adaptations of The Turn of the Screw. If you’ve never heard of it, don’t feel bad because most people haven’t – but The Innocents deserves its rightful spot on any list of great horror films. Here is one of the few films where the ghost story takes place mostly in daylight, and the lush photography, which earned cinematographer Freddie Francis one of his two Oscar wins, is simply stunning. Meanwhile, director Jack Clayton and Francis made great use of long, steady shots, which suggest corruption is lurking everywhere inside the grand estate. The Innocents also features three amazing performances; the first two come courtesy of child actors Pamela Franklin (The Legend of Hell House), and Martin Stephens (Village of the Damned...

It’s the most uncomfortable type of horror scene, but if done correctly, can pack a gut punch. The violation scene is the moment when the character’s vulnerability is betrayed and our empathy immerses us deeper into their dreadful ordeal. The young child possessed by an evil spirit. The unlucky bystander assaulted in a tunnel. The crazed woman submitting to a creature of non human origin. The violation scene can be emotional or it can be exploitative, but it’s almost always guaranteed to get us talking.

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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)- Cesare abducting Jane

Even though it was one of the originators of German Expressionist film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is often regarded as the pinnacle for the movement. Two of the movement’s basic tenets were distorted lines and shapes and overly theatrical movements from the actors, and both are well on display in this creepy scene.

Jack Clayton's masterpiece, one of the greatest cinematic ghost stories, is ill-served by this lowbrow trailer that sells it like a cheap Eurotrash import. Although not a commercial success at the time, it has since been hailed as one of the best British films of the 1960s, with a powerhouse performance by Deborah Kerr as the frightened, possibly deranged governess.Her chilling charges are played by Martin Stephens (Village Of The Damned) and, in her film debut at 11 years of age, Pamela Franklin. ...

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A Ghost Story For Adults

By Raymond Benson

Under appreciated upon its original release in 1961, The Innocents is today considered one of the great film ghost stories. After all, it’s based on Henry James’ creepy The Turn of the Screw, a truly scary masterwork published in 1898. In the capable hands of Jack Clayton (fresh off his success with Room at the Top, which had been nominated for Best Picture and Best Director in 1959), the picture delivers a classic Gothic punch that is strange, beautiful, and, ultimately, powerfully disturbing. Faithful to the source material, the story is set in the Victorian era. The gorgeous and inimitable Deborah Kerr stars as a naive and, as it turns out, sexually repressed governess who is hired by an eccentric and secretive man (“The Uncle,” played by Michael Redgrave). She is to be a governess to his...

Based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents remains one of the very best ghost films. As it is re-released for the festive season, Michael Newton explores the freedoms and horrors of trusting your own imagination

One late Victorian Christmas Eve, around the fire, a man settles down to read aloud to the other house-guests the manuscript of a ghost story. His tale is that of a governess in another country house decades before, and of her two charges, a boy called Miles and his sister, Flora. Removed from the world in an idyll of apparent purity, things darken as the governess perceives, or perhaps merely imagines, that the children's last governess, Miss Jessel, and her Heathcliff-esque lover, the virile servant, Peter Quint, have returned from the dead to possess the children. And then a darker fear comes to her mind: what if the children are complicit in their corruption?...

The Hobbit | Fill The Void | The Innocents | The Christmas Candle | Cinema Paradiso | Tamla Rose

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug (12A)

(Peter Jackson, 2013, Us/Nz) Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch. 161 mins

If the first Hobbit movie felt padded out, that didn't seem to put anyone off: its global box-office take was more than $1bn. But now all that protracted set-up is out of the way this middle section hits the ground running and barely lets up, as Freeman and his dwarves hack their way through a theme park's worth of action adventures to close in on the Lonely Mountain. It's a giddy ride, for sure, but we also get a fuller sense of Middle Earth's landscape and inhabitants. Oh yes, and there's a dragon…

Fill The Void (U)

(Rama Burshtein, 2012, Isr) Hadas Yaron, Yiftach Klein, Irit Sheleg. 91 mins

The strictures of ultra-orthodox Judaism give this modern-day story a curiously archaic feel,...

This sinister ghost story, adapted from a Henry James novella, makes your blood run cold

Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961), now on national rerelease, is an elegant, sinister and scalp-prickling ghost story – as scary in its way as Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist. It has to be the most sure-footed screen adaptation of Henry James, taken from his 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, clarifying some of the original's ambiguities and obscurities, but without damaging the story's subtlety. Deborah Kerr plays Miss Giddens, a governess hired to look after two children in a country estate: Flora (Pamela Franklin) and Miles (Martin Stephens). Miss Giddens finds something she describes as "secret, whispery, and indecent": the house is haunted by the souls of Peter Quint, a drunken, disreputable valet, and Miss Jessel, the former governess whom he seduced. Without admitting it, the children can see the ghosts as well; the spectres have become their secret,...

Martine Beswick (One Million Years B.C., Slave Girls and Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde), Caroline Munro (Captain Kronos and Dracula A.D.72), Kate O'Mara (Horror of Frankenstein and The Vampire Lovers) and Maddie Smith (Vampire Lovers and Frankenstein and the and Monster from Hell). (Photo: copyright Mark Mawston, all rights reserved.)

Saturday 9th November 2013

Report by Adrian Smith

On Saturday in the shadow of Westminster Abbey, amidst the power-hungry elite of Whitehall and Downing Street, gathered an even more sinister and corrupting influence. Darth Vader rubbed shoulders with evil twins, corrupted children, vampires, zombies and even Jack the Ripper. Overseeing this evil conclave were directors whose films were so depraved that sometimes sick bags were supplied to the audience.

Horror film buffs were of course overjoyed at the fantastic selection of stars at this Hammer and Horror Film event. Representing the Bond girls were Caroline Munro, Caron Gardner, Martine Beswick and Madeline Smith.

Every year, we here at Sound On Sight celebrate the month of October with 31 Days of Horror; and every year, I update the list of my favourite horror films ever made. Last year, I released a list that included 150 picks. This year, I’ll be upgrading the list, making minor alterations, changing the rankings, adding new entries, and possibly removing a few titles. I’ve also decided to publish each post backwards this time for one reason: the new additions appear lower on my list, whereas my top 50 haven’t changed much, except for maybe in ranking. Enjoy!

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Special Mention:

Shock Corridor

Written and directed by Samuel Fuller

USA, 1963

Shock Corridor stars Peter Breck as Johnny Barrett, an ambitious reporter who wants to expose the killer at the local insane asylum. To solve the case, he must pretend to be insane so they have him committed. Once in the asylum,...

Odd List Ryan Lambie 4 Oct 2013 - 06:41

They're funny, they're sad, they're weird. Here are 50 famous last words from characters in the movies...

Please Note: There are potential spoilers ahead. Check the name of the film, and if you haven't seen it, don't read the entry!

As someone famous probably once said, “We’ve all gotta go sometime,” and if we’re going to die, we might as well do so with a witticism or a memorable line rather than a scream and a cry for mother. Which is the subject of this lengthy but far from definitive list: the memorable things movie characters have uttered shortly (not necessarily immediately) before they’re about to meet their maker.

Some of these last words are long, tear-jerking monologues. Others amount to little more than a word or two. But all of them, in our estimation, are worthy of mention, and one...

Images Of Black Women Film Festival | London Palestine Film Festival | Marcel L'Herbier: Fabricating Dreams

Images Of Black Women Film Festival, London

This festival has a clear mission: to promote women of African descent, in front of and behind the camera. The result is a spread of films from around the globe that you're unlikely to see anywhere else. Family drama Elza is the first female-directed feature from Guadeloupe; Pariah charts the coming out of a Brooklyn lesbian; and Black is a polished Senegalese action-thriller. There are docs on Nigerian women who protest against oil companies by threatening to strip naked, plus various art and children's events.

Various venues, Sat to 11 May

London Palestine Film Festival

History inevitably weighs heavily on Palestinian culture, but this festival regularly finds fresh perspectives on what feels like an age-old issue, both from the past and the present. Director David Koff revisits his once-controversial...

Throughout the month of October, Editor-in-Chief and resident Horror expert Ricky D, will be posting a list of his favorite Horror films of all time. The list will be posted in six parts. Click here to see every entry.

As with all lists, this is personal and nobody will agree with every choice – and if you do, that would be incredibly disturbing. It was almost impossible for me to rank them in order, but I tried and eventually gave up.

****

Special Mention:

Shock Corridor

Directed by Samuel Fuller

Written by Samuel Fuller

1963, USA

Shock Corridor stars Peter Breck as Johnny Barrett, an ambitious reporter who wants to expose the killer at the local insane asylum. In order to solve the case, he must pretend to be insane so they have him committed. Once in the asylum, Barrett sets to work, interrogating the other patients and keeping a close eye on the staff.

Fans of horror know there is nothing scarier than a scary kid – not to mention all of the clues to imminent death that surround them. Nursery rhymes in shrill falsettos, blank eyed dolls, the sound of a carousel… all signs that there is a miniature psycho somewhere nearby (if you spot a treehouse in a snowy garden, it’s game over).

Here are ten of the most disturbing, spooky and downright devious kids in movies.

10) The Innocents

“But Miles, its neck… It looks as though…”

“Someone had broken it? Yes, poor thing. I’ll bury it tomorrow. Kiss me goodnight, Miss Giddens.”

Deborah Kerr stars as Miss Giddens, the governess sent to that staple of horror films – a big rambling house in the middle of nowhere, to look after that other staple of horror films; two strange children.

Miles (Martin Stephens) and his sister Flora (Pamela Franklin) are terribly polite,...

The Innocents communion: possessed Martin Stephens, Christian Deborah Kerr Deborah Kerr Pt.3: Socially Dubious Desires Later on, in the television miniseries A Woman of Substance (1984) and its follow-up, the TV movie Follow the Dream (1986), Deborah Kerr played a former kitchen maid-turned-businesswoman who didn’t reach the top by being all chaste and poised along the way. (Jenny Seagrove played the character as a young woman.) And once at the top, Kerr’s tycoon does whatever she feels necessary to remain there. Admittedly, Deborah Kerr didn’t create any of those characters all by herself. She did, however, bring them to life in ways that most performers, regardless of gender, would be either unwilling or unable to do. And even though Kerr once complained of her early "goody goody" roles, she surely knew what was going on inside those deceptively prim and proper women she played prior to From Here to Eternity.

By Todd Garbarini

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Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others (2001) is a brilliantly scary film. Almost as scary is realizing that ten years have transpired since this film played in theaters. Released just one month prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, The Others is the flipside of Peter Medak’s The Changeling (1980), a glorious ghost story with enough style and substance to draw comparisons to the genre’s crown jewels: Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961) and Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), both of which are in dire need of Blu-ray upgrades.

The film opens with a series of hand-drawn images that segue into the house where all of the action takes place. This is a device used many times in films, but it is particularly striking in The Others. It is 1945 and off the coast of France on the island of Jersey lives Grace, played skillfully by Nicole Kidman,...

Peter Wyngarde, Martin Stephens, The Innocents Max Schreck, Nosferatu: Top Five Scariest Living Dead Pt.2 When I first saw it as a kid, I loved Jack Clayton's spooky 1961 movie The Innocents, adapted by Truman Capote from Henry James' novel The Turn of the Screw. Admittedly, The Innocents is the kind of movie that could have turned this Catholic school student into a remorseless serial killer — what with incest (between young siblings Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin), child sexuality (that's Stephens and Franklin again), repressed female libido (that's prim and proper Christian governess Deborah Kerr), un-prim, un-proper, and un-Christian sex fantasies (Kerr again), and a highly eroticized male ghost (Peter Wyngarde) who possesses the little boy, turning him into a sex animal. Luckily, The Innocents failed to lead me astray, for my vulnerable youthful psyche had already been debased by another 1960s repressed sex/unrepressed ghost tale, Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963). So,...

31 – Rosemary’s Baby

Directed by Roman Polanski

USA, 1968

Roman Polanski’s brilliant horror-thriller was nominated for two Oscars, winning Best Supporting Actress for Ruth Gordon. The director’s first American film, adapted from Ira Levin’s horror bestseller, is a spellbinding and twisted tale of Satanism and pregnancy. Supremely mounted, the film benefits from it’s strong atmosphere, apartment setting, eerie childlike score and polished production values by cinematographer William Fraker. The cast is brilliant, with Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes as the young couple playing opposite Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer, the elderly neighbors. There is ominous tension in the film from first frame to last – the climax makes for one of the greatest endings of all time. Rarely has a film displayed such an uncompromising portrait of betrayal as this one. Career or marriage – which would you choose?

30 – Eraserhead

Directed by David Lynch

USA, 1977

Filmed intermittently over the course of a five-year period,...

25 – Halloween

Directed by John Carpenter

1978 – Us

A historical milestone that single-handedly shaped and altered the future of the entire genre. This seminal horror flick actually gets better with age; it’s downright transcendent and holds up with determination as an effective thriller that will always stand head and shoulders above the hundreds of imitators to come. Halloween had one hell of an influence on the entire film industry. You have to admire how Carpenter avoids explicit onscreen violence, and achieves a considerable power almost entirely through visual means, using its widescreen frame, expert hand-held camerawork, and terrifying foreground and background imagery.

24 – Black Christmas

Directed by Bob Clark

1974 – Canada

We never did find out who Billy was. Maybe it’s for the best, since they never made any sequels to Bob Clark’s seminal slasher film, a film which predates Carpenter’s Halloween by four years. Whereas Texas Chainsaw Massacre, released the same year,...

With Santa Claus right around the corner, what better time is there to point out those good little boys and girls who have taken a turn for the worse? These are the baddest of the bad, the meanest of the mean, naughtiest in Santa’s list. They didn’t start out that way… Some say it’s genetics. Others say it’s how they were raised. Some are just being controlled by the devil himself! No matter how you view it, these kids are going to see a lot of coal in their stockings if they keep it up… Top Ten: Santa’S Naughty List

10. The Exorcist

The Exorcist (1973) starred a young Linda Blair as Regan, an innocent little girl possessed by the devil. Sure, most parents out there surely feel their children are possessed by the devil at one point or another, but Linda Blair and the special effects...