I'm only getting a chance to read this thread now, and I won't try to formulate an eloquent essay since there are several here already. I just have a couple of comments, and they're taken almost direct from my post in the Dan Curtis thread from a few days back.
I had a taste for the macabre from a very early age. I remember my mother taking me to the public library when I was about seven and I told the librarian I wanted a "scary" book. The book she gave me was "Where the Wild Things Are," which I found very disappointing. I must have already been watching DS by this time.
Throughout the '70s one of the networks produced a "Movie of the Week" and they delivered a number of chillers. I can only remember a few of them, but one that comes to mind (which I mentioned in yet another thread!) was "When Michael Calls," about terrifying phone calls a young couple receives from their dead son (as best I remember it). Then there was the TV movie where a group of people had somehow been gathered in a remote location (possibly a lush island paradise, I'm not sure) and awful things happened as they struggled to remember/understand what they were doing there. I'm sure these were not graphically horrible things like in today's movies, but I can still feel the sense of dread that built from these character's fears, and in the surprise ending it slowly dawned on them: they were dead. A plane crash here, a car accident there ... they began to remember.
Another made-for-TV movie was about a family who drove into a small New England town, Melas, where awful things happened. I think there was a young blonde woman who was practicing witchcraft and working mischief and evil on the family, and driving a wedge between the husband and wife. At the end, the family narrowly escaped from the town's wicked inhabitants. In the rearview mirror of their car you could see the town's welcome sign as they drove off. The lettering was reversed in the mirror to show the town's disguised name:
S - A - L - E - M.
Then there was a wonderfully disturbing remake of an old classic, "Death Takes a Holiday" with Melvyn Douglas and the alluring Yvette Mimieux. The realization builds that an awful thing was happening -- no one was dying, anywhere. Death had come to earth in the form of a man and fallen in love, taking a leave of absence from his duties ... Somehow this movie had a grandeur and dignity about it ...
There were many such movies, where the horror was conveyed not through special effects or buckets of blood, but through the writing and direction, and the sense of dread these produced.
I remember a number of suspense movies of this period, thrillers rather than horror, such as "You'll Like My Mother," which aired on TV (both this movie and "The Other" are erroneously referred to as having been made for TV by posters on the imdb; neither was made for TV), as well as a number of made-for-TV thrillers that starred such screen legends as Olivia DeHavilland and Shelley Winters. I guess the time for those movies is long past.
I began reading Edgar Allen Poe's unsurpassed stories when I was still in grade school, and a few years later Frankenstein and Dracula. Somewhere about this time the last good horror movies were produced (IMO) - The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, The Other (from the Thomas Tryon novel, which I read before the movie was made). The directors of these films were well respected, not the hacks that seem to direct so many of today's endless stream of gorefest flicks. I had already read "The Exorcist" and frankly was disappointed in the movie, not to mention disappointment with the audience which tittered with laughter rather than fainting or throwing up as the newspaper stories were saying.
Far better, I thought, was Rosemary's Baby, which my family watched when it aired on TV, and viewing it again today I find its web of deceit and suspense unsurpassed.
Then "The Omen" came out, and while the subject matter appealed to me, I remember seeing too many gaps in the story and again being mildly disappointed. All the kids were eager to see the head being lopped off by the sheet of glass, which I thought was a bit much.
I think it was shortly after this that "Carrie" came out. I heard a lot about it from other kids, but the bucket of blood or whatever didn't appeal to me and I never saw it. In fact, I never saw another horror movie after that. Just hearing about them turned me off (and I was only a junior high kid) -- the blood and guts, the slashers. I've seen parts of those movies on TV from time to time, and while they have jolts and some suspense, can you actually be interested in the characters the way you are with, say, Marion Crane in "Psycho"?
For me, the entire genre seemed to have changed and I never again had an interest in "horror."
It wasn't until I rediscovered DS again in the last few years that a spark of my previous interest has been rekindled, and I've learned about such movies as The Haunting, The Uninvited, The Innocents (thanks to posters on this board and the previous board!). I
was very interested in the Blair Witch Project, which sounded very promising, but somehow I never got to the theater. And from what I hear, the recent "The Others" also may have some of the qualities that I used to like about horror (though I've heard it has a surprise ending that sounds very similar to one of those made-for-TV movies from the '70s that I mentioned above).
Well, I guess I went on a bit longer than I planned, caught up in reminiscing.
Note to Luciaphil and Raineypark: When I was at my local B&N last week, I happened to remember the writer you had been talking about - E. F. Benson. Low and behold, I discovered a copy of his Collected Ghost Stories, bought it, and am looking forward to reading some of them. I also have the LeFanu stories, de la Mare, and several other classics still to read.
Oh, and I hope to read the three chapters from the unpublished DS novel next week once I've finished up another class ...
-Vlad
