The Uninvited – Lee Duigon

The Highest-Grossing Horror Movies of All Time | Mental Floss

I know this isn’t so for everybody; but for some of us, there’s nothing quite so bracing as a good, clean scare–just the thing horror movies were invented to provide. My wife and I both find a good scary movie very relaxing. Sure, it creeps you out for a time: but then it stops! Don’t you wish real-life problems would just stop, roll the credits, and trouble us no more?

Take a classic horror movie like The Uninvited. No cussing, no nudity, no writhing around in the bed–and no blood ‘n’ guts spattered all over the screen. And all the deaths and tragedies involved are in the past (hence the ghosts). It’s in black-and-white, and none of the characters gets killed. It’d be hard to create something less like today’s horror movies; but The Uninvited packs plenty of good, stiff scares. And having Ray Milland, Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Alan Napier in the cast doesn’t hurt, either.

Sometimes we’d like to see a movie that we haven’t seen before. We read the descriptions and rule out the slasher movies. But we still get stung. The last one we saw was supposed to be an H.P. Lovecraft thing, based on one of our favorite Lovecraft stories, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Back in the 20s and 30s, HPL wasn’t even allowed to write gross-out horror. So his tales rely on true creepiness and weird takes on reality. And never mind! This movie soon degenerated into nudity, physical cruelty, and violence that was so far over the top, it was almost funny. The key word is “almost.”

In the last couple modern horror movies we’ve seen, the story always seems to wind up, “And then everybody got killed in assorted nasty ways!” It’s like the writers walked out halfway through the picture and the director’s 12 and 13-year-old kids had to write the rest of it.

Is this telling us something about our culture, that can’t even crank out a proper ghost story anymore?

I think so.

Night Tide (1961) - IMDb

I can’t help it: I love movies that don’t have a prayer of being true. I love monster movies. I get a kick out of a good ghost story. And somehow these movies always seem at their best in the fall.

Here are four of my favorite films along these lines, all of them available somewhere on the Internet. Try Youtube first, then amazon. These are sure to brighten any October weekend.

*Night Tide, starring a brand-new Dennis Hopper. How often do you get to see a scary movie about a mermaid? Despite American International’s trademark cheesy special effects, this movie does contain moments of real eeriness and beguiling fantasy. You’ll be surprised by how un-awful it is.

*The Crawling Eye. A monster movie set in the Swiss Alps–how cool is that? I once nagged my wife to watching it with me–in truth, she hates monster movies–and she had to admit it wasn’t bad. (As you can see, I have set the bar a little low. But “not that bad” is a real achievement for most of these films.) Hey, the crawling eye creeping out of the icy fog–ooooh! That’s scary, boys and girls!

*Zacherley’s Horrible Horror–here we leave “not that bad” behind and plunge into the world of “oh, good grief!” Zacherley, who was surely the greatest horror movie host ever, has assembled a dazzling array of trailers for hopelessly bad films, interrupted by his own weird humor. You don’t want to miss The Alligator People!

*The Uninvited–I’ll throw in a genuinely good one, just to show you my heart’s in the right place–not in a jar on Robert Bloch’s desk. Starring Ray Milland, The Uninvited is one of the all-time best ghost movies, and seasoned with enough humor to keep you from hiding under the sheets. It’s got everything–and all without a second of gore, profanity, or fornication.

Well, there you have it–four October movie treats. Let me know how you like ’em.