Shocktober: Hidden Horrors

At this festive time of year, it's customary to thumb through one's video collection and bring out the dead...er, the classics of the horror and sci-fi genres for one's viewing pleasure.

It's easy to lean toward the more popular titles--your Boris Karloff Frankenstein, your Bela Lugosi Dracula, your Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man or, if your tastes run more toward the modern than the monochromatic, your Freddys, Jasons, Michaels and Jigsaws.

But there are plenty of lesser-known (at least to average fans, if not aficianatos), yet eminently worthy, monster movies to make your run-up to All Hallow's Eve even more creepy. Here are a few suggestions now--I'll have a few more later.

The Old Dark House (1932). The least known of the horror films from Universal's golden age (1931-1936), even though it has a terrific cast--Melvyn Douglas, Ramond Massey, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, Ernest Thesiger and Boris Karloff (who gets top billing, even though he has only a small supporting role)--and James Whale as director. Not only is it the best representative of its subgenre, the "Creepy Old House Stalked by a Madman/Killer" movie, but in terms of mood created through simple yet detailed sets, artfully placed lighting and shadows (some painted on the set walls) and use of sound (no musical score, but plenty of creaks, groans and howling winds), this may well be Whale's best directing job--and the perfect movie for a dark and stormy night.

Fiend Without a Face (1958). Set on the Canada/U.S. border, this sci-fi flick about changing thoughts into matter gets off to a slow start, but be patient--once the monsters show up, you won't be able to forget them, no matter how hard you try. They're stop-motion animated brains! That fly across the room at their intended victims! And strangle them with dangling spinal cords! Then suck out the victim's brain! It's brain-on-brain crime! Aaaaaaah!

The Flesh and the Fiends (1959). Yet another excursion into Victorian-era body-snatching territory (after The Body Snatcher and Corridors of Blood), but with much period detail, great performances by Peter Cushing (as the doctor who receives the curiously fresh corpses) and Donald Pleasance (as one of the particularly nasty "ressurectionists"), surprising amounts of nudity and violence (for a film made in Britain in 1959, at least) and an alarming willingness to dispatch major characters well before the movie is anywhere near over, adding to the viewer's already substantial discomfort level.

Scream of Fear (1961). A young woman in a wheelchair (Susan Strasberg) visits her father's villa in France, where she meets her stepmother (Ann Todd), the family's hunky chauffer (Ronald Lewis) and the local doctor (Christopher Lee). But where's her father? "Away on business," she's told. So why does Dad--looking very, very dead--keep popping up all over the house? Is he really dead? Is the young lady going crazy? Will you figure out the multiple-twist ending? An unusual, monster-free black & white psychological thriller from Hammer, the studio that brought you Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula in blood-red color.

Count Dracula (1977). Bram Stoker's novel has been filmed numerous times, with varying degrees of fealty to the source material. While this version, shot for the BBC on film and videotape, tweaks the story as well--Mina and Lucy are now sisters, and Louis Jourdan doesn't look a thing like the vampire Stoker describes (he's more of a Bela Lugosi-type Dracula)--this is still the most accurate adaptation of the novel, incorporating characters (like Quincy Holmwood) and scenes (like Dracula feeding infants to his vampire brides) that most versions leave out. Plus, Jourdan makes a suave, imposing bloodsucker.

Dog Soldiers (2002). Good werewolf movies have been few and far between, but here's the best one in recent years. Writer/director Neil Marshall (whose next film, The Descent, was a huge hit, while his latest release, Doomsday, was not) sets his story in the Scottish wilderness, with a platoon of British soldiers (led by Sean Pertwee) comes face-to-furry-face with a pack of werewolves. The budget is low, but Marshall gets the most out of it, playing things for laughs and action as much as scares, and wisely chooses to avoid using digital effects for his lycanthropes, giving them a tactile believability that all too many modern movie monsters lack. It's a shame that Dog Soldiers got unceremoniously dumped onto the video market here in the U.S.--I bought my copy from the discount bin at my neighborhood Walgreens. This would have been a kick to see on the silver screen.