A guide to films that express social realism or escapism; and a guide to culturally important films that may reveal a character's thoughts, dreams, or motivations.
Image from The Night of the Hunter from tumblr.com at https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/night-of-the-hunter
Classic Scary Movies
The Cabinet of Dr. CaligariIn the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a somnambulist commits murders under a hypnotist's influence. Also featured is a lengthy excerpt of Genuine. Both films are examples of the German Expressionist movement.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE CABINET
ISBN: 6305075492
Publication Date: 1920
Carnival of SoulsA woman is haunted by strange images and events after she survives a near-fatal car crash.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE CARNIVAL
ISBN: 9781681431772
Publication Date: 1962
Hosue/ ハウス- HausuTokyo teenager Gorgeous is upset with her long-widowed father--he wants to marry his new girlfriend Ryoko. Seriously miffed, Gorgeous hits the road to visit her aunt in the country, bringing along her best girlfriends Sweet, Melody, Fantasy, Prof, Mac, and Kung Fu. The titular house belongs to the wheelchair bound aunt, whose large white cat has been immortalized in artwork throughout. Things soon start to go very badly for the teenagers. While there are pinwheeling body parts, there are also bits of homage to avant-garde cinema, Looney Tunes cartoons, schlock Italian horror, chop-socky martial arts--all in a dreamlike, phantasmagoria of brightly colored Seventies-era kitsch. This is hardly to everyone's tastes, but it is old-school Japanese insanity of the very best kind.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE NOBUHIKO
ISBN: B003WKL6XA
Publication Date: 1977
The InnocentsAdaptation of Henry James' Turn of the screw. A governess suspects her young charges are demonically possessed.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE INNOCENTS
ISBN: B0009X75EC
Publication Date: 1961
Island of Lost SoulsLaughton is a mad doctor conducting ghastly genetic experiments on a remote island in the South Seas, much to the fear and disgust of the shipwrecked sailor who finds himself trapped there.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE ISLAND
ISBN: 0715515088114
Publication Date: 1932
Les DiaboliquesSuspense classic that influenced the 1960 movie, Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock. Tells the story of a sadistic headmaster of a Parisian boarding school who is murdered by his wife and mistress, whom he has mistreated. The women dump his body in a swimming pool. When the pool is drained, the body has disappeared. Then come reports of sightings, terrifying his killers.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE DIABOLIQUE
ISBN: B06XSF5ST8
Publication Date: 1955
The Night of the HunterA self-styled preacher marries and murders the widow of an executed convict with whom he once shared a cell. He then terrorizes her two young children to force them to tell him the whereabouts of the $10,000 he knows their father hid before his imprisonment.
"The Night of the Hunter -- incredibly, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed -- is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, it stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher named Harry Powell (he of the tattooed knuckles), whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters, are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic -- also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee -- is cinema's most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil."--Publisher.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE NIGHT
ISBN: B003ZYU3U0
Publication Date: 1955
NosferatuRather than depict Dracula as a shape-shifting monster or debonair gentleman, Murnau's Graf Orlok is a nightmarish, spidery creature with a bulbous head and taloned claws.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE NOSFERATU
ISBN: B017V5YYDU
Publication Date: 1922
RepulsionCarol, who works in a beauty salon in London, is both repulsed and fascinated by men. She is unsure of how to handle their advances, which are numerous because she is gorgeous. Gripped by mental illness, she eventually imprisons herself in her apartment, where she suffers from sexual dreams. Her delirium leads to dire circumstances.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE REPULSION
ISBN: B0026VBOK6
Publication Date: 1965
Image from The Night Of The Hunter from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/2014/03/20/the-night-of-the-hunter/#jp-carousel-35210
Image from The Night Of The Hunter from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/2014/03/20/the-night-of-the-hunter/#jp-carousel-35210
Image from The Night Of The Hunter from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/2014/03/20/the-night-of-the-hunter/#jp-carousel-35210
Image from Carnival of Souls from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/2015/02/28/carnival-of-souls/#
Image from Eyes Without a Face from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/2015/10/06/eyes-without-a-face/#
Image from Eyes Without a Face from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/2015/10/06/eyes-without-a-face/#
Image from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/2014/11/05/the-cabinet-of-dr-caligari/
Image from Suspiria from cinemababel.com at https://cinemababel.com/2018/10/29/why-suspiria-is-an-enduring-horror-cult-classic/
Image from House (Hausu) from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/2015/06/22/house-hausu/#
Classic Scares
Cat PeopleA Serbian immigrant living in Manhattan believes that, because of an ancient curse, any physical intimacy with the man she loves will turn her into a feline predator.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE CAT
ISBN: 9781681432021
Publication Date: 1942
EraserheadA nightmarish collage of images which blends the grotesque and the absurd, the deeply disturbing and the darkly humorous. Henry is the nerdish central character who lives in a squalid apartment with a strange girl and their monstrous baby. The extraordinary special effects create an eerie, dream-like world with a logic all its own.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE ERASERHEAD
ISBN: B00L3ZB4F6
Publication Date: 1977
Eyes Without a FaceA plastic surgeon, holed up in a Paris mansion, is obsessively slicing off the faces of kidnapped women and grafting the flayed skin onto the rotting countenance of his beloved young daughter, disfigured in an automobile accident.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE EYES
ISBN: 9780780028883
Publication Date: 1960
The Golem: How He Came Into the WorldIn 16th century Prague, Rabbi Loew creates a giant Golem from clay to protect his people from their persecutors. Employing sorcery, he brings the artificial man to life, endowing him with human emotions. Famulus, Loew's evil assistant, manages to take control of the Golem, commanding it to perform sordid criminal acts culminating in the kidnapping of the Rabbi's daughter Miriam. The monster, outraged, rebels and a rampage ensues.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE GOLEM
ISBN: B0000AOWNX
Publication Date: 1920
HäxanIn a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that witches of the middle ages and turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients suffer from the same type of hysteria. Its a witches brew of the scary, the gross and the darkly humorous.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE HAXAN
ISBN: B00005O5CA
Publication Date: 1929
Night of the Living DeadA simple, peaceful countryside is being terrorized by killer zombies with only one thing on their minds--destroy all humans. A small stronghold of survivors must hold the zombies at bay outside an old, abandoned house for any future hope of humanity.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE NIGHT
ISBN: 9780766205918
Publication Date: 1968
OnibabaDeep within the wind-swept marshes of war-torn medieval Japan, an impoverished mother and her daughter-in-law eke out a lonely, desperate existence. Forced to murder lost samurai and sell their belongings for grain, they dump the corpses down a deep, dark hole and live off of their meager spoils. When a bedraggled neighbor returns from the skirmishes, lust, jealousy, and rage threaten to destroy the trio’s tenuous existence, before an ominous, ill-gotten demon mask seals the trio’s horrifying fate. Driven by primal emotions, dark eroticism, a frenzied score by Hikaru Hayashi, and stunning images both lyrical and macabre, Kaneto Shindo’s chilling folktale Onibaba is a singular cinematic experience.
Call Number: BLU-RAY MOVIE ONIBABA
ISBN: B00019JR5Y
Publication Date: 1964
SuspiriaHorror film about an American student enrolled in a German dance academy. A series of bizarre incidents and brutal murders puts the academy in chaos.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE SUSPIRIA
ISBN: B000S0GYRU
Publication Date: 1977
VampyrA young traveler finds a remote castle, and starts seeing mysterious things, only to find that his own nightmares are coming true.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE VAMPYR
ISBN: 9781604650464
Publication Date: 1932
Image fromOnibaba from giphy.com at http://gph.is/1KizLNG