Horror Films

Today I’m looking at the genre of what I term “Horror Films” and listed below are some of the horror films I have. Some of these I’ve already dealt with under the “Classic Films”, “Westerns”, “War Films”, “Drama Films”, “Action Films”, “Drama Films”, “Comedy Films” & “Musical Films” so I won’t go into any detail on those, however some of the “Horror Films” I have not dealt with I will look at in a bit more detail.

All the films listed below have horror listed as one of their categories.

Some of the “Horror Films” I possess and enjoy include



An American Werewolf in London 3*
The Bat
The Birds (Hitchcock) 3*
The Black Cat
Blood from the Mummy's Tomb
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) 4*
The Bride of the Monster
Carrie
The Curse of Frankenstein
The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb
Damien : Omen II
Dawn of the Dead
Dead of Night (1945) 4*
Demons of the Mind
The Devil Rides Out
The Devils
Doctor Terror's House of Horrors
Don't Look Now
Dracula Prince of Darkness
Dracula (1931) (Bela Lugosi) 3*
Dracula (1958) – Hammer) 3*
Dracula - Prince of Darkness
The Exorcist
Omen III The Final Conflict
Fear in the Night
Frankenstein (1931) 4*
Frankenstein Created Woman
Frankenstein Must be Destroyed
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley's)
Freaks
Godzilla (Gojira)
Gothic
The Horror of Frankenstein
The House of Fear
The Invisible Man (1933) 4*
Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde 1931) 4*
Jekyll & Hyde
King Kong (1933) 4*
The Little Shop of Horrors
The Mummy
The Mummy
The Mummy's Shroud
The Nanny
Nosferatu (1932) 3*
The Old Dark House (1932) 4*
The Omen
The Phantom of the Opera (ORIGINAL B&W) 3*
The Phantom of the Opera (1925) (Tinted Original) 3*
The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera
The Plague of the Zombies
Quatermass and the Pit
Race with the Devil
Rasputin the Mad Monk
The Reptile
Rosemary's Baby
The Satanic Rites of Dracula
Scars of Dracula
Sherlock Holmes - Dressed to Kill
The Shining
Taste the Blood of Dracula
Taste the Blood of Dracula
To the Devil a Daughter
Vampire in Venice
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
The Wicker Man
The Witches
The Wolf Man

Looking down the list of horror films I was quite surprised just how many films I had tagged with “horror” – I’m not a bloodthirsty type of person, but an entertaining, well made horror film can stir the hairs on the back of your head like nothing else I know. I don’t mean the more modern slasher/chainsaw/blood and gore type of horror film, but the good old fashioned Dracula, Frankenstein, Burke and Hare type of film.

There were two classic periods of horror film productions. One was that occupied by Universal Films, (1930 onwards) who produced the classic Black & White Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man kind of film. The other period was in the late 50’s – early 60’s when Hammer Films were at their most prolific. Again it was the classic (but this time in colour) Dracula and Frankenstein films which were to the fore. In the intervening years various other individual companies have produced some entertaining and exciting horror films too.

I have chosen to stick with the 1925 – 1935 period, when the stars were Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Frederick March, Colin Clive and Claude Rains. There are some real classic horror films in this list!


Frankenstein (1931) 4*
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) 4*
Dracula (1931) 3*
The Invisible Man (1933) 4*
Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde 1931) 4*
King Kong (1933) 4*
The Old Dark House (1932) 4*
The Phantom of the Opera (1925) (Tinted Original) 3*
Nosferatu (1932) 3*

Frankenstein is a 1931 horror film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and very loosely based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley as well as the play adapted from it by Peggy Webling. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features Dwight Frye and Edward van Sloan. The Webling play was adapted by John L. Balderston and the screenplay written by Francis Edward Faragoh and Garrett Fort with uncredited contributions from Robert Florey and John Russell. The make-up artist was Jack Pierce.
In 1991, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant"
This film was #27 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

American Film Institute recognition
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #87
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes #49
"It's alive! It's alive!"
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #56

Bride of Frankenstein (advertised as The Bride of Frankenstein) is a 1935 horror film, the first sequel to the influential Frankenstein (1931). Bride of Frankenstein was directed by James Whale and stars Boris Karloff as The Monster, Elsa Lanchester in the dual role of his mate and Mary Shelley, Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein, and Ernest Thesiger as Doctor Septimus Pretorius.
The film follows on immediately from the events of the first film, and is rooted in a subplot of the original novel.

Here she is in all her loveliness - the Bride of Frankenstein

Dracula is a 1931 United States horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Béla Lugosi as the title character. The film was produced by Universal Pictures Co. Inc. and is based on the stage play of the same name by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.

Dracula carries a victim

The Invisible Man is a 1933 horror film based on H. G. Wells' science fiction novel The Invisible Man, published in 1897, as adapted by R. C. Sherriff, Philip Wylie and Preston Sturges, whose work was considered unsatisfactory and who was taken off the project. The film was directed by James Whale and stars Claude Rains, in his first American screen appearance, and Gloria Stuart. It is considered one of the great Universal Horror films of the 1930s, and spawned a number of sequels, plus many spinoffs using the idea of an "invisible man" that were largely unrelated to Wells' original story.

In his first American screen appearance, Rains portrayed the Invisible Man (Dr. Jack Griffin) mostly only as a disembodied voice. Rains is only shown clearly for a brief time at the end of the film, spending most of his on-screen time covered by bandages.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) is a horror film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Fredric March. The film is an adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), the Robert Louis Stevenson tale of a man who takes a potion which turns him from a mild-mannered man of science into a crude homicidal maniac

King Kong is a 1933 landmark black-and-white monster film about a gigantic gorilla named "Kong" and how he is captured from a remote lost prehistoric island and brought to civilization against his will. The film was made by RKO and was originally written for the screen by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman, based on a concept by Merian C. Cooper. A major on-screen credit for Edgar Wallace, sharing the story with Cooper, was unearned, as Wallace became ill soon after his arrival in Hollywood and died without writing a word, but Cooper had promised him credit. A novelization of the screenplay actually appeared in 1932, a year before the film, adapted by Delos W. Lovelace, and contains descriptions of scenes not present in the movie.
The film was directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, starred Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot, and is notable for Willis O'Brien's ground-breaking stop-motion animation, Max Steiner's musical score and Fay Wray's performance as the ape's love interest.





In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

In April 2004, Empire magazine ranked King Kong as the top Movie Monster of all time.

In May 2004, Total Film magazine ranked the final scene from the Empire State Building as the third "Best Film Character Death".

King Kong was also listed by Time magazine in its "All-Time 100 Best Movies" feature.
2008 was listed 4th in Top 10 Fantasy Films.

American Film Institute recognition
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #43
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #12
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions #24
AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores #13
AFI's 10 Top 10 #4 Fantasy film
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes #84
"Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #41

The Old Dark House is a 1932 horror film directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, produced just one year after their success with Frankenstein. It is based on the 1927 novel Benighted by J. B. Priestley, published in the United States under the same title as the film, and was adapted for the screen by R.C. Sherriff and Benn Wolf Levy. Filled with humorously sophisticated dialogue, the movie also stars Melvyn Douglas and features Charles Laughton, Ernest Thesiger (Doctor Pretorius in Whale's 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein), Raymond Massey, and Gloria Stuart (the elderly "Rose" in 1997's Titanic) as the ravishing young ingenue. According to the Penguin Encyclopaedia of Horror and the Supernatural, the Femm family's ancient patriarch was played by a woman, Elspeth Dudgeon (billed as "John Dudgeon"), because Whale couldn't find a male actor who looked old enough for the role.




In spite of the presence of Karloff, The Old Dark House was largely ignored at the American box office, although it was a huge hit in Whale's native England where the audience was more in tune with the director's distinctive, ironic sense of black humour. For many years, it was considered a lost film and gained a tremendous reputation as one of the pre-eminent gothic horror films. Finally, in 1968, a print of the film was discovered by Curtis Harrington in the vaults of Universal Studios and restored so that it could once more be shown in public.





The Phantom of the Opera is a 1925 silent film directed by Rupert Julian adaptation of the Gaston Leroux novel of the same title. The film featured Lon Chaney in the title role as the masked and facially deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House, causing murder and mayhem in an attempt to force the management to make the woman he loves a star. It is most famous for Lon Chaney's intentionally horrific, self-applied make-up, which was kept a studio secret until the film's premiere.




The film also features Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland, John St. Polis and Snitz Edwards. The only surviving cast member is Carla Laemmle (born 1909), niece of producer Carl Laemmle, who played a small role as "prima ballerina" in the film when she was about 15.
The movie was adapted by Elliott J. Clawson, Frank M. McCormack (uncredited), Tom Reed (titles) and Raymond L. Schrock. It was directed by Rupert Julian, with supplemental direction by Edward Sedgwick, and Lon Chaney

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (translated as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror; also known as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror or simply Nosferatu) is a German Expressionist vampire horror film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok.





The film, shot in 1921 and released in 1922, was in essence an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel (for instance, "vampire" became "Nosferatu" and "Count Dracula" became "Count Orlok").