Every year, I see those Chuck Workman clip compilations on the Oscars broadcast and I think, “Gee, that looks like a fun job.” Also every year, I wish I had started thinking about Halloween early enough to do something special for my Web site. Here’s the result of those twin impulses: a short montage of clips culled from my collection of horror movies from 1960 and later, cued up and intertwined in a sequence dictated by my memories of watching them over the decades — and some ascertainment of their meanings in relation to one another — and set to a fairly arbitrary choice of music. Accordingly, and as HBO and/or the MPAA might note, it contains graphic violence, brief nudity, strong language, strong sexual content, and some disturbing images. It also may contain sidelong SPOILERS for a number of terrific horror movies (they’re listed at the bottom of this entry), so proceed at your own risk.
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[right click]Films cited (in order of first appearance):
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
Dressed to Kill (De Palma, 1980)*
Audition (Miike, 1999)*
Mute Witness (Waller, 1994)
Blood and Black Lace (Bava, 1964)
The Funhouse (Hooper, 1981)
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Dust Devil (Stanley, 1992)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984)
Blow Out (De Palma, 1981)
Opera (Argento, 1987)
An American Werewolf in London (Landis, 1981)*
Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978)
Scanners (Cronenberg, 1981)
Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983)
Alien (Scott, 1979)
Re-Animator (Gordon, 1985)
Braindead [aka Dead Alive] (Jackson, 1992)
Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968)
The Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981)
Dellamorte Dellamore [aka Cemetery Man] (Soavi, 1994)
Memento Mori (Kim, 1999)*
Kairo [aka Pulse] (Kurosawa, 2001)
Don’t Look Now (Roeg, 1973)
*Asterisks denote the presence of potential spoiler material
This is hardcore. Nice work.