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.
You are the dreamer, and the dream...
Comments
Eraserhead and Psycho up there.
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.
https://archive.org/details/Nosferatu1922
Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? - unsettling and memorable with creepy Bette Davis
King Kong - the original and best
Eyes Without a Face
As for "when am I ready?" You'll never be ready. It works in reverse, you become ready by doing it. - pmbomb
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.
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.