by JB
In the mood for some turgid fun on a budget? The following titles are available FREE on the YouTube machine, and COMMERCIAL FREE if you, like me, pay some service like Verizon, to carefully remove the commercials with a tweezers every month for the princely sum of ten dollars.
It’s the best ten dollars I have ever spent.
The Haunted House (1921)Buster Keaton shows us all how it is done. Watch this one in the dark. Actually, watch all ten of these in the dark! You know, Keaton’s “collapsing staircase to hell” is a real thing that exists. Honest. I have been on it.
The Cat and the Canary (1927)This film is the granddaddy of the haunted house subgenre. You have undoubtedly seen dozens of riffs on this familiar theme. A group of strangers are forced to spend the night in a creepy mansion. (The reasons for this vary, but two favorites are inclement weather and the reading of a will.) Creepy stuff happens, and eventually we discover the unexpected... or totally expected... source of the creep-eepiness. Sound familiar?
The Old Dark House (1932)James Whale was such a fan of The Cat and the Canary that he made his own version at Universal Studios between directing Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Have a potato?
The Ghost Walks (1934)Nice example of a B-movie programmer, meant to round out an evening’s entertainment at the local Bijou. Not all movies back then were big budget and star studded. A lot of them were like this one... and that is why today, they are forgotten.
This one involves ghosts.
Haunted House (1940)Another nice example of a B-movie programmer, meant to round out an evening’s entertainment at the local Bijou. Not all movies back then were big budget and star studded. A lot of them were like this one... and that is why today, they are forgotten.
This one involves a house.
Terror in the Haunted House (1958)Controversial at the time, this movie tried to use subliminal frames to scare audiences... but the producers used the subliminal angle in its advertising, so audiences knew all about it in advance... which makes them hardly subliminal! This is the Rhino Records re-creation of “psycho-rama” from the Eighties; they basically added cartoon ghoulies to single frames in the film.
House on Haunted Hill (1959)William Castle’s entry into the haunted house genre. Original screenings featured “Emergo” where theater staff would float an inflatable skeleton above audiences’ heads, and misbehaving little boys would try to knock said skeleton off its guide wires by throwing popcorn boxes at it. A recent screening of this at Chicago’s Music Box Theater recreated the Emergo gimmick. God, how I wanted to attend that screening.
Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story
Assuming that House on Haunted Hill gives you an insatiable yearning to learn more about filmmaker William Castle, check out this nifty documentary.
House of the Damned (1963)Yet another nice example of a B-movie programmer, meant to round out an evening’s entertainment at the local Bijou. Not all movies back then were big budget and star studded. A lot of them were like this one... and that is why today, they are forgotten.
This one involves the damned.
Hillbillies in a Haunted House (1967)In case any of my readers have EVER said to themselves, “Gosh, Lon Chaney, John Carradine, and Basil Rathbone were all terrific, accomplished horror actors. But what I would like... is to see them in a movie with country and western stars Merle Haggard, Ferlin Huskey, Molly Bee, and Sonny James! Here is the movie for YOU.
Happy Scary Movie Month.
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