It’s the time of year when the Blockbuster down the street runs out of every copy of John Carpenter’s “Halloween.” Now, you could run across the street to the other Blockbuster, but chances are, it’s not there, either.
But who really needs to see Michael Myers stalk Jamie Lee Curtis again, anyway? Why not take a leap into the darker territory of more obscure fear films? In the spirit of the truly disturbed, I offer a film lover’s guide to the Halloween flicks hiding in the horror aisles.
A word of caution should be noted before we begin. If “Friday the Thirteenth Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan” is your idea of a scary movie, rent “Friday the Thirteenth Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.” The movies that follow are the oddballs — the flicks that challenge the viewer but guarantee chills and often linger in the mind for days to come.
We’ll start chronologically. Based on Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw,” 1961’s “The Innocents” is a creepy little black-and-white flick about a governess (Deborah Kerr) hired to watch over two children convinced that the ghosts of two dead lovers haunt their home. To reveal more would ruin the movie, but let’s just say the harder Kerr tries to rid the children of their fears, the more crazy she becomes.
The second selection is 1972’s “The Last House on the Left.” This was Wes Craven’s first movie — some 10 years before “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and 25 years before the pop culture
phenomenon of the “Scream” series. This movie is low, low budget. But the horrors come from the completely plausible events of the plot, which involves two girls who are kidnapped and mercilessly tortured by an escaped convict and his posse. This one makes “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” look like a Merchant-Ivory production.
Next, there’s Nicholas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now.” This is horror for the art crowd, as “Don’t Look Now” is more or less an exercise in photographic creepiness. The movie is full of symbolism and recurring imagery in what amounts to a surreal nightmare picture.
Brian DePalma was one of the leaders in American horror movies during the ’70s, his most famous being 1976’s “Carrie.” But if you’ve watched Sissy Spacek raise hell at the prom and crave more telekinesis, check out the director’s 1978 follow-up, “The Fury.”
Though it was dismissed at the time as repetitive, “The Fury” has moments of true cinematic power. Amy Irving plays a teenager with “mad-telekinesis” powers who goes to a school to hone her talents. Here, she locks into a psychological connection with a former resident of the school and, sensing he’s in danger, ventures off to find him. The movie stumbles at times, but has one of the best death scenes ever put on film.
We’ll end with a guilty pleasure. “The Bride of Chucky” isn’t exactly obscure, but it is underrated. It may offer more laughs than fear, but the most recent entry in the “Child’s Play” series is unique and highly stylized, thanks to director Ronny Yu. If you’re not quite ready for the rest on the list, at least you can watch Chucky get laid. What could be more entertaining than that?
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