Classic B&W Horror Movies

darthed1981

Spin off from the diversion in the second-hand CDs thread...

What are your favourite horror films from the Black and White era, even maybe early colour?

Personally...

Portmanteau horror stunner "Dead of Night" - lost none of it's impact.  Helped by a fantastic cast and one of the best wraparound stories ever in a portmanteau film.

MR James adaptation "Night of the Demon" ("Curse..." in the US) probably one of the two finest adaptations of the ghost-story legend's work, and again, holds up to this day.

What are your favourites?  For fun, lets include monster movies as well as horror, as that's always fun to discuss as well...

You probably all know this but my favourite monster movie is Harryhausen classic "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" about them unlocking a frozen dinosaur from ice... on land (checks notes... yep) with a nuke and then it eats things.

Stratavarious

Invasion of the body snatchers and Them were cool as a kid, still good now,

Eraserhead and Psycho up there.

darthed1981

Stratavarious said:

Invasion of the body snatchers and Them were cool as a kid, still good now,

Eraserhead and Psycho up there.

Ahh Them!  Great movie!!!  Can't beat giant ants.

I happened to be watching it once and my little girl who was about five at the time came and sat with me and was very impressed by the bit at the end where the police officer sacrifices himself to save the kids, she actually took the DVD and watched it by herself again the next day.

Her introduction to the concepts of bravery, self-sacrifice and heroism was a 50s B-movie about giant ants...

JezWynd

James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein is an incredible film. Beautifully photographed - many frames could be artworks.



Secondly, Charles Laughton directed Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum as the preacher. Not a horror film per se, it is though very scary in parts and again the photography is beautiful - the car at the bottom of the river with Shelley Winters sitting in it is an especially haunting moment. Such a shame it was not more popular at the time as Laughton never directed another film.

LordBucketHead

What A Carve Up (1961) with Sid James, Kenneth Connor & Donald Pleasance. A bit like 'Cat and the Canary' (1939) that starred Bob Hope. Family gathers at a spooky house after the death of Kenneth Connor's uncle and the bodies start piling up.

darthed1981

JezWynd said:

Secondly, Charles Laughton directed Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum as the preacher. Not a horror film per se,

I'd class it as a horror for sure "psychological horror" - and way ahead of its time in that as well.

Offset

Night Of The Demon is up there.  Plus Nosferatu of course.

Stratavarious

Yep.. Nosferatu.. so much cinema innovation too.

https://archive.org/details/Nosferatu1922

west

" Keep watching the skies ....! "

alalalkasar

The Haunting is a fine film.

Shrews

The Beast With Five Fingers - a pianists severed hand starts killing people
Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? - unsettling and memorable with creepy Bette Davis
King Kong - the original and best

Kittyfrisk

alalalkasar said:

The Haunting is a fine film.

The Haunting 1963, is indeed a masterpiece of zero blood, guts & monsters but still viscerally chilling & terrifying.

west

The innocents ...( deborah  kerr and peter wyngarde)  based on  henry james turn of the screw ....

also , wyngardes  night of the eagle .... 

for fun ....  The ghost train  .....

Jonathangus

Cat People
Eyes Without a Face

Kittyfrisk

Tod Browning’s Freaks,  not an easy watch at any time.

LordBucketHead

I seem to remember 'Shadow Of A Doubt' (1943) blew my socks off. A Hitchcock movie I'd never seen or heard of before. It left a lasting impression so it must have been good.

west

"Klaatu barada nikto " ....

west

"Help me .... help meeeeeeeeeee ! "

bacchanalian

The uncle of a friend of mine used to run his own cinema at his house. He had bought the seats and sound gear from a cinema that was being refurbished. 
I spent many Friday nights of my early teens watching classic movies.
I agree with many of the above and would add The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Is The Village of the Damned SciFi or Horror?

Not strictly from the classic era but black and white, Young Frankenstein  is brilliant.

LordBucketHead

'Whistle And I'll Come To You' (1968) - One of the Ghost Stories For Christmas broadcasts. The wonderful Michael Hordern is simply mesmerising for me in this role (look for the actual video rather than the book reading audio). 

Redlester

Stratavarious said:

Yep.. Nosferatu.. so much cinema innovation too.

https://archive.org/details/Nosferatu1922

Murnau, the director, went to on make Faust, another silent era classic. Not quite as chilling as Nosferatu, but it has its moments. 

The Golem.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. 

These are all continental, silent-era works. Not too long and freely available on Youtube. 

I don't know what on earth they were on or what they were thinking in the 20s,- perhaps it was the collective shock of WWI and massive social change combined- but some of those old silent flicks are seriously macabre. They reach right back into the darkness which has always been there in European culture and society, but add a whole level of visceral gore and spooky imagery (WWI), together with a relentless drive to explore seriously twisted ideas and behaviours (this was the era of increasing interest in/ research into psychological phenomena- especially abnormalities-- think Freud et al).

Oh, and as well as keeping your inner cultural critic satisfied, they're mostly all great clicks with top-draw stories and acting.


On MR James- never seen Night of the Demon. Isn't it based on 'Casting the Runes'? That's probably his finest story IMO, at least in terms of pure literary construction.