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Psychological Horror Films see all Horror Film DVDs Stylish & sophisticated, these scary films aren't about spilling blood, guts & gore, but instead, rely on tension-building psychological drama skillfully manipulated by the filmmaker to achieve maximum frightful effect. |
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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.
The House with Laughing Windows (1976)-DVD
This exquisite masterpiece of Italian horror seethes with menacing atmosphere and diabolical plot twists guaranteed to haunt your dreams. Never before released in America, "The House with Laughing Windows" (La casa dalle finestre che ridono) is the crowning achievement of internationally hailed director Pupi Avati and has been restored to its full gothic glory from the original camera negative.
Dario Argento's masterpiece whch some refer to as the "Psycho" of Italian cinema. Vivid, horrific imagery in this thriller driven by haunting memories, offering combined the horror and suspense of Hitchcock's films, with modern European attitudes, settings and generous amounts of gore.
see more Gore/Slasher Films | see more Italian Horror Films | see more Monster Movies
KOMA intricately weaves a jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding joyride through the darkest regions of the human psyche. A psychological thriller tackling the urban myth of organ theft from a humane perspective, Hong Kong director Lo Chi Leung weaves an emotional cat-and-mouse game between two women. As facts begin to emerge, the truth becomes clearer one has something that the other one desperately needs. As they become closer to each other, they find themselves on the brink of unspeakable danger.
Fascinating tale in this Japanese horror/suspense film about the very dark and violently twisted private life of a very quiet, shy and sensitive young woman. Great suspense and a strong cast.
A
Tale of Two Sisters-DVD (Deluxe Edition)
Two young sisters recovering from an unnamed trauma must face a mysterious past in this excellent South Korean shocker. A worldwide hit upon its release and based on an old Korean fairy tale; two sisters (wonderfully played by Su-jeong Lim and Geun-yeong Mun) come to live with their cold and distant father and turn-on-a-dime stepmother in a house where nothing is as it seems. A wonderfully haunting score, starkly beautiful imagery, and a labyrinthine plot that twists and turns at every dark corner all set the stage for a riveting and often terrifying guessing game of a movie. Equal parts drama, mystery, and ghost story, A Tale of Two Sisters is a richly complex and challenging cinematic treat that may very well demand repeat viewings.
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Picnic
at Hanging Rock - Criterion Collection
Situated somewhere between supernatural horror and lush Victorian melodrama, Twenty years after it swept Australia into the international film spotlight, Peter Weir's stunning 1975 masterpiece remains as ineffable as the unanswerable mystery at its core and a highlight of the '70s Australian New Wave. A Valentine's Day picnic at an ancient volcanic outcropping turns to disaster for the residents of Mrs. Appleyard's school when a few young girls inexplicably vanish on Hanging Rock. A lyrical, meditative film charged with suppressed longings, Picnic at Hanging Rock is at long last available in a pristine widescreen director's cut with a newly-minted Dolby® digital 5.1 channel soundtrack.
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.
Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar's debut film, is a quietly creepy psychological thriller about a young college student, Ángela (Ana Torrent) investigating the social fascination with sensational violence for her thesis project. In her search for violent video footage, she stumbles onto what may be a real live snuff film, a videotape that her professor was watching before his untimely death. With the help of a geeky gore junkie she uncovers a conspiracy that may include her handsome but sinister new boyfriend, her thesis advisor, and even her weirdo partner. When she uncovers one too many secrets lying in the catacombs of the university basement, she realizes that she may be the next victim. Reminiscent of Brian De Palma's early thrillers: dark, stylish, subdued, and bubbling with the characters' guilty (and ultimately dangerous) fascination with the transgressive.
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Professor David Ash (Aidan Quinn) is skeptical of the supernatural, yet he is invited by elderly Nanny Tess Webb (Anna Massey) to investigate paranormal goings-on at her country estate. When Ash arrives, he meets her three adult children (Kate Beckinsale among them, who becomes his future love interest) and the family doctor (John Gielgud), all of whom deny anything is going on and claim that Nanny Tess is merely hallucinating. Yet after spending some time there, the professor begins experiencing unexplainable visions that only Nanny Tess, and often only he, sees. Furthermore the ghost of his sister, who died as a child in a drowning accident, begins to roam the estate. Is he imagining it and going mad? Or is the house truly haunted? Adapted by Tim Prager from the James Herbert novel, Lewis Gilbert's highly memorable film is a brilliant haunted-house tale with chilling scenes and an exceptional plot twist.
Devil Doll (1964)-DVDGrab a good seat and don't look away from the stage, for The Great Vorelli (Bryant Haliday) is about to dazzle London with his eerie mixture of hypnotism and ventriloquism. However, there may be something a little too lifelike about his dummy, Hugo, who has the ability to walk across the stage all by himself. Experience the haunting imagery and unforgettable twist ending of "Devil Doll," the cult horror classic from producer Richard Gordon which has chilled audiences for decades. Hailed as tense and terrifying, this gem of psychological suspense and supernatural thrills can now be enjoyed in a dazzling new transfer--so little Hugo can reach out and shock you like never before!
Someone Behind the Door (1971)-DVD
This psychological thriller stars Anthony Perkins as a brain surgeon who finds amnesia victim (Charles Bronson), takes him in for care and ends up convincing him to murder his wife. Smartly written, well acted and moves at a brisk pace.
Arguably the best and most personal of director David Cronenberg's early films, The Brood is an extremely unsettling horror film about familial disintegration and emotional trauma taken to a monstrous extreme.
As a bleak and chilling mood piece, The Machinist gets under your skin and stays there. Christian Bale threw himself into the title role with such devotion that he shed an alarming 63 pounds to play Trevor Reznik (talk about "starving artist"!), a factory worker who hasn't slept in a year. He's haunted by some mysterious occurrence that turned him into a paranoid husk, sleepwalking a fine line between harsh reality and nightmare fantasy--a state of mind that leaves him looking disturbingly gaunt and skeletal in appearance. (It's no exaggeration to say that Bale resembles a Holocaust survivor from vintage Nazi-camp liberation newsreels.) In a cinematic territory far removed from his 1998 romantic comedy Next Stop Wonderland, director Brad Anderson orchestrates a grimy, nocturnal world of washed-out blues and grays, as Trevor struggles to assemble the clues of his psychological conundrum. With a friendly hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and airport waitress (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) as his only stable links to sanity, Trevor reaches critical mass and seems ready to implode just as The Machinist reveals its secrets. For those who don't mind a trip to hell with a theremin-laced soundtrack, The Machinist seems primed for long-term status as a cult thriller on the edge.
The son of Satan has come and he will rise to power in an attempt to take over the world. Includes all four films in the horrifying film series: "The Omen" (1976, 111 min.), "Damien: Omen 2" (1978, 107 min.), "Omen 3: The Final Conflict" (1981, 108 min.) and the made-for-television "Omen 4: The Awakening" (1991, 97 min.).
A welcome throwback
to the spooky traditions of Jack Clayton's The Innocents and Robert Wise's
The Haunting, Alejandro Amenábar's The Others favors atmosphere,
sound, and suggestion over flashy special effects. Set in 1945 on a fog-enshrouded
island off the British coast, the film begins with a scream as Grace (Nicole
Kidman) awakens from some unspoken horror, perhaps arising from her religiously
overprotective concern for her young children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and
Nicholas (James Bentley). The children are hypersensitive to light and
have lived in a musty manor with curtains and shutters perpetually drawn.
With Grace's husband presumably lost at war, this ominous setting perfectly
accommodates a sense of dreaded expectation, escalating when three strangers
arrive in response to Grace's yet-unposted request for domestic help. Led
by housekeeper Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), this mysterious trio is
as closely tied to the house's history as Grace's family is--as are the
past occupants seen posthumously posed in a long-forgotten photo album.
With her justly acclaimed performance, Kidman maintains an emotional intensity
that fuels the film's supernatural underpinnings. And while Amenábar's
pacing is deliberately slow, it befits the tone of penetrating anxiety, leading
to a twist that extends the story's reach from beyond the grave. Amenábar
unveiled a similarly effective twist in his Spanish thriller Open Your Eyes
(remade by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky), but where that film drew debate,
The Others is finely crafted to provoke well-earned goose bumps and chills
down the spine.
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.
When a recent widower (the wonderfully overemphatic George C. Scott ) moves into an antique Washington mansion, his realization that he may not be the only resident leads him toward a deadly secret that refuses to remain buried....The best haunted-house film since the legendary Haunting, this potent, classy combination of the mystery and horror genres eschews explicit gore and dumb shocks in exchange for a subtle creepiness that occasionally builds to a terrifying peak (watch out for that seance scene!). The result is a satisfyingly intelligent horror film with an intriguing dash of Watergate-era paranoia.
Based on the Robert Marasco novel of the same name, Dan Curtis's eerie movie puts a spin on celluloid haunted-house sagas. The well-adjusted Rolf family (father Oliver Reed, mother Karen Black, aunt Bette Davis, and young son Lee H. Montgomery) rent a huge old summer house only to find that its spirit is in control of the estate. The requisite sinister proceedings appear--including a possessed pool and the vision of a sinister hearse driver following Reed--that disrupt the family's unity. Black also falls under the spell of an elderly woman whom she is required to take care of, but no one ever sees. While it may not be as overtly shocking as other ghost tales, Burnt Offerings has a creepiness that gets under your skin thanks to good performances and the dreamy, soft-focus photography.
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.
With an ace up its sleeve, Identity does for schizophrenia what The Silence of the Lambs did for fava beans and a nice chianti. On the proverbial dark and stormy night, this anxiety-laced thriller offers a tasty blend of And Then There Were None and Psycho, with a dash of Sybil for extra spice and psychosis. Things go from bad to worse when 10 unrelated travelers converge at an isolated motel and proceed to die, one by one, with no apparent connection... until they discover the common detail that's drawn them into this nightmare of relentless trauma. Even as it flunks Abnormal Psychology 101, Michael Cooney's screenplay offers meaty material for a superior ensemble cast including John Cusack and Rebecca DeMornay (who wins the Janet Leigh prize in a bitchy comeback role). Director James Mangold pivots the action around one character (played by his Heavy star, Pruitt Taylor Vince, in eye-twitching cuckoo mode), and half the fun of Identity comes from deciphering who's who, what's what, and who'll be the next to die.
When a Stranger Calls Back DVD (1993)
When a Stranger Calls" remains a classic a quarter century after its release, but this sequel is the rare one that outdoes its predecessor! The first movie started and ended with chills and thrills at the beginning and end but had a stagnant middle. This one is nonstop terror that will leave you clinging to your seat! The original cast is back, an especially nice touch, and some of the plot is the same, but rather than a rehash of the original, this one is sure to become a treasure all its own! Pop some corn, turn out the lights....and be sure to check the kids first.
