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Nosferatu
- Special Edition DVD
As
noted critic Pauline Kael observed, "... this first important
film of the vampire genre has more spectral atmosphere, more ingenuity,
and more imaginative ghoulish ghastliness than any of its successors." Some
really good vampire movies have been made since Kael wrote those
words, but German director F.W. Murnau's 1922 version remains a definitive
adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Created when German silent films
were at the forefront of visual technique and experimentation, Murnau's
classic is remarkable for its creation of mood and setting, and for
the unforgettably creepy performance of Max Schreck as Count Orlok,
a.k.a. the blood-sucking predator Nosferatu. With his rodent-like
features and long, bony-fingered hands, Schreck's vampire is an icon
of screen horror, bringing pestilence and death to the town of Bremen
in 1838. (These changes of story detail were made necessary when
Murnau could not secure a copyright agreement with Stoker's estate.)
Using negative film, double-exposures, and a variety of other in-camera
special effects, Murnau created a vampire classic that still holds
a powerful influence on the horror genre. (Werner Herzog's 1978 film
Nosferatu the Vampyre is both a remake and a tribute, and Francis
Coppola adopted many of Murnau's visual techniques for Bram Stoker's
Dracula.) Seen today, Murnau's film is more of a fascinating curiosity,
but its frightening images remain effectively eerie.
All of
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Buying
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German Horror Classics (Nosferatu (1922) / The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / Waxworks
/ The Golem) DVD
These
silent masterpieces of German Expressionism have been digitally remastered
from 35mm archival materials and feature new period subtitles. This collection
is classic with a capital "C".
Black Sunday (aka The Mask of Satan) (1961)
The
reigning masterpiece of Italian horror cinema, Mario Bava's Black Sunday
remains one of the most stylishly photographed of all horror films, ranking
with any other black-and-white film of lasting repute. This was the master
cameraman's official directorial debut, and his striking compositions are
the work of a genuine artist in peak form. Loosely adapted from a story
by Nikolai Gogol, this chilling vampire tale begins in 17th-century Moldavia,
where the evil Princess Asa (Barbara Steele) is executed for witchcraft
and vampirism, along with her brother Javutich (Arturo Dominici). Two centuries
later, a pair of traveling doctors discover Asa's crypt and inadvertently
revive the evil princess, whose scheme of vampiric revenge is aimed at her
own identical descendant Princess Katia, an innocent beauty (also played
by Steele) whose lifeblood will ensure Asa's immortality. Influenced by
Universal's classic horror films of the '30s and British Hammer films of
the late '50s, Black Sunday (released in Italy as The Mask of Satan) is
a dark fairy tale, with horror queen Steele as the definitive embodiment
of erotic horror. With shocking violence (tame by today's standards) and
visual emphasis on tombs, secret passages, ominous castles, and unseen forces,
the film offers a wealth of memorable imagery and inventive technique. Redubbed,
rescored, and harshly edited for its American release in 1961, Black Sunday
is presented on DVD in the original English-language director's cut of The
Mask of Satan, never before available in the U.S. The perfect movie to watch
on a dark and stormy night, this timeless classic is the Citizen Kane of
horror films, entirely worthy of its lofty reputation.
see
More Italian Horror
Films
The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
Death
has never stopped anyone from crafting a sequel to a successful film,
but Terence Fisher and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster rather ingeniously twist
the climactic execution of The Curse of Frankenstein into the opening
of The Revenge of Frankenstein. With a cold-blooded flourish that would
become his trademark, Frankenstein plots his escape and sends an innocent
(a priest, no less) to take his place on the guillotine, leaving himself
free to continue his experiments. As the new head of a hospital for the
poor, he builds a body for his crippled assistant from parts amputated from
his patients, but body battles mind for supremacy and turns the newly ambulatory
man into a bloodthirsty cannibal. Once again Fisher makes the most of a
constricted budget, turning his poorhouse hospital into a cramped, dank
hole and splurging on another colorful laboratory of buzzing devices and
a centerpiece tank for his suspended creature. There are few innocents in
the Frankenstein films and this is no different: high-society dandies are
hypocrites, poorhouse patients thieves and opportunists, and of course the
driven doctor is willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to achieve his
goal. The clever conclusion, which lays the groundwork for the next sequel,
was curiously ignored when the third installment finally arrived six years
later in The Evil of Frankenstein.
More Monster
Movies | More Science
Fiction-Classic Horror Films
Eyes Without a Face - Criterion Collection
Secluded
in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor attempts a radical
plastic surgery to restore his beloved daughter’s once-beautiful face,
but at a horrifying price. Lauded as a true rarity of horror cinema, Eyes
Without a Face (Les Yeux sans visage) has influenced countless films in
its wake and stunned audiences around the world with its shocking yet poetic
imagery. Reminiscent of Cocteau's fantasy imagery in Beauty and the Beast,
George Franju creates an eerie poetry of the doctor's sadistic experiments,
culminating in an astonishingly brutal and beautiful finale. The screenplay
was cowritten by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, authors of the novels
which became Les Diaboliques and Vertigo. The Criterion Collection is proud
to present Georges Franju’s lyrical black-and-white classic in a long-awaited,
high-definition DVD edition.
Night of the Living Dead(Millennium Edition)
George Romero's
classic 1968 zombie-fest (shot in black and white) offers some disturbing
images, even decades later. In a Pittsburgh suburb people are being stalked
by zombies ravenous for human flesh. In a house whose occupant has already
been slain, two separate groups of people unite and board themselves in,
hoping to fend off the advancing ghouls. Through radio and TV reports they
learn that radiation from outer space is thought to be responsible for the
wave of zombie attacks all over the eastern United States. Once the humans
are trapped, Romero shifts the focus to the internal feuding between them
as they decide how to handle their dreadful situation. What unfolds is an
examination of human nature, and of the fear and selfishness that keep many
citizens from getting involved in the world's problems. Elite has made the
best even better with this new remaster for the Millennium Edition, and
the DVD is filled with even more supplements. Romero and screenwriter John
Russo discuss the challenges of the production with coproducers/costars
Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman on one commentary track, while a cast party
gathers for a raucous reunion on a second track. Other highlights include
a gallery of Romero's TV commercials (check out the clever low-budget parody
of Fantastic Voyage for Calgon), an articulate and thoughtful 16-minute
audio-only interview with star Duane Jones (the last before his death),
and heretofore unseen clips from Romero's "lost" film There's
Always Vanilla. An essential disc for any horror enthusiast and still the
definitive presentation.
More Slasher Films
The Haunting (1963)
Certain to remain one of the greatest haunted-house movies ever made, Robert
Wise's The Haunting (1963) is antithetical to all the gory horror films of subsequent
decades, because its considerable frights remain implicitly rooted in the viewer's
sensitivity to abject fear. A classic spook-fest based on Shirley Jackson's novel
The Haunting of Hill House (which also inspired the 1999 remake directed by Jan
de Bont), the film begins with a prologue that concisely establishes the dark
history of Hill House, a massive New England mansion (actually filmed in England)
that will play host to four daring guests determined to investigate--and hopefully
debunk--the legacy of death and ghostly possession that has given the mansion
its terrifying reputation.
More Haunted
House Movies
The Innocents-DVD (1961)
The definitive
screen adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, the 1961 production
of The Innocents remains one of the most effective ghost stories ever filmed.
Originally promoted as the first truly "adult" chiller of the
big screen (a marginally valid claim considering the release of Psycho a
year earlier), the film arrived at a time when the thematic depth of James's
story could finally be addressed without the compromise of reductive discretion.
And while the Freudian anxiety that fuels the story may seem tame by today's
standards, the psychological horrors that comprise the story's "dark
secret" are given full expression in a film that brilliantly clouds
the boundary between tragic reality and frightful imagination...The result
is a masterful film--comparable to the 1963 classic The Haunting--that uses
subtlety and suggestion to reach the pinnacle of fear.
The Other (1989)-VHS
Released
in 1972, "The Other" is a psychological horror film with supernatural
overtones, including a magic ring and a strange "game" the
boys like to play with the help of their grandmother (the talented stage
actress Uta Hagen). The tone is helped immensely by the controlled direction
of Robert Mulligan ("To Kill a Mockingbird") as well as uniformly
good acting.
The Ghoul (1933)
In this 1933
British film--made between Boris Karloff's stints as the monster in 1931's
FRANKENSTEIN and THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN in 1935--Karloff plays a dying
Egyptologist who possesses an occult gem, known as The Eternal Light,
that he believes will bring him immortality if he is buried with it and
is thereby able to present it to Anubis in the afterlife. Of course,
his bickering, covetous heirs and avaricious associates would rather
keep the gem for themselves. With this in mind, Karloff vows to rise
from his grave and seek revenge should anybody meddle in his plans, and
he keeps this promise when, just after his death, one of his colleagues
steals The Eternal Light. An atmospheric gothic flick ... film aficionados
who love the old Universal monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s will
find a lot to enjoy here.
Carnival
of Souls - Criterion Collection (1962)
Herk Harvey's
macabre masterpiece gained a cult following through late night television
and has been bootlegged for years. Made by industrial filmmakers on a
modest budget, Carnival of Souls was intended to have the "look
of a Bergman" and "feel of a Cocteau," and succeeds with
its strikingly used locations and spooky organ score. Mary Henry (Candace
Hilligoss) survives a drag race in a rural Kansas town, then takes a
job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. En route, she becomes haunted
by a bizarre apparition that compels her to an abandoned lakeside pavilion.
The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1966) -DVD
The last
film ever made by the great Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M, The Big Heat),
this fascinating thriller combines elements of film noir, horror, and
science fiction. Gert Frobe (Goldfinger) stars as police commissioner
Kras, trying to uncover the sinister secret of the mysterious Hotel Luxor,
ground zero for a massive crime wave. The crimes show all the hallmarks
of evil genius Dr. Mabuse--but he died 30 years ago! Digitally restored
from original studio negatives.
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