Hello boys and ghouls. It’s actually not still Halloween, of course. But, for the purposes of finishing our rundown of the top 13 horror films of all time, we’re going to pretend it is.

Hope you all had a spooky one and enjoyed yourselves. You didn’t just stay in watching Halloween 2 on BBC1, did you? Thanks to some kind of minor social miracle, I actually got invited to a Halloween party! And most enjoyable it was, too. In case you’re wondering, I went as Alan Partridge as a zombie, which was met with predictably nonplussed responses. Oh, well. It was a great party, and they had The Texas Chainsaw Massacre playing on a loop in the living room and everything! And if you’re looking for a clue as to how terrifying and bloody brilliant the remainder of our list is going to be, I’ll let it slip that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn’t even in there!

But, what is? Read on to find out… IF YOU DARE!!!!!!

Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973)

Almost certainly the most obscure film on the list (more so than even Alice, Sweet Alice and Blue Sunshine from part one), this is a strange and enthralling gothic fairytale. Superbly put together and beautiful to look at, the only thing more remarkable than the fact it was made for peanuts is the fact that it has languished in obscurity for so long.

Lemora stars late B-movie regular Cheryl Smith (Caged Heat, Phantom of the Paradise) as Lila Lee, a 13-year-old gospel singer who has been fostered by the Reverend of her church. Upon recieving a letter from her real father, a gangster suffering from a fatal wound and being held at a strange house in a town called Astaroth, Lila steals away to see him before he dies. The journey alone is enough to make Lila uncertain of the wiseness of her decision to seek her father out, as a group of deformed maniacs lay siege to her bus and kill the driver. Managing to escape, Lila makes her way through a dark and dazzling Southern Gothic landscape to the house and her father, who is being guarded by the sinister Lemora of the title. Lemora already has loads of weird kids hanging around the house, and she seems keen to add Lila to her collection. She also has a private army of vampires under her control, and is waging a war against the same deformed maniacs who had earlier munched the bus driver. It’s not long before all hell breaks lose in Astaroth, but can Lila and her father escape in time?

I can’t stress enough how beautiful Lemora is to look at. Setting itself up as a dreamlike fable of childhood innocence under threat, the film is pitch perfect and incredibly atmospheric throughout. Strangely, its director, Richard Blackburn, never made another film, although he did co-write another dark fable, Paul Bartel’s Eating Raoul. Despite all this talk of fable and fairytale, Lemora is also occassionally gruesome and always unsettling. The film is never more unsettling than when Lemora herself is onscreen. Played by the uncannily Sigourney Weaver-like Lesley Gilb, who never appeared in anything else, some of Lemora’s most haunting sequences are of the vampire queen grooming her young charges. 

Following its release, the film got into hot water with the Catholic League of Decency, due largely to the predatory nature of Lemora’s relationship with Lila. This controversy, and subsequent banning in some territories, is doubtless partly responsible for Lemora being tragically overlooked. Don’t make the same mistake. I urge you to seek out Synapse’s fantastic recent DVD release and prepare to have your breath taken away by a dark, forgotten classic.

Martin (1977)

Running the risk of widespread derision and, quite possibly, contempt, I hereby include George A. Romero’s Martin in the list at the exclusion of the generously spectacled horror legend’s two most famous masterpieces. Yes, that’s right; I prefer Martin to both Night and Dawn of the Living Dead. But rather than take that as sacrilege, simply accept it as testament to how excellent a film Martin is. And no, it’s not a Martin Kemp biopic.

Instead, Martin is the tale of a young lad with a penchant for sedating women, slicing their wrists open and drinking their blood. This makes him a vampire, non? Well, it certainly makes him a very modern one, and Martin’s Olde Worldy uncle is having none of it, forcing the eponymous anti-hero to come and stay with him in backwater Pittsburgh in order to be cured. Belonging very much to the old school of vampire handling, Martin’s uncle tries every hackneyed trick in the book, from the garlic clove to the crucifix, but nothing seems to work. The strangely sympathetic Martin resolves to cure himself and embarks on an affair with an unhappy housewife. But can he resist the old, murderous temptations, and how long before his uncle runs out of patience, and weans him off the blood by giving him some ”stake”? Groan.

Just one of a handful of criminally underrated Romero films (see also; Jack’s Wife, The Crazies, Creepshow and Monkey Shines. His romantic comedy (!) There’s Always Vanilla ain’t bad, either), Martin is his most restrained and, maybe even, personal film. As noted earlier, this is due in no small part to the depiction of Martin as more troubled teenager than maniacal monster, and the role is brilliantly brought to life by Romero regular John Amplas. That’s not to say that Martin isn’t as thrilling as George A.’s more famous films, and, indeed, I consider the opening, tensely staged, murder aboard a sleeper train to be the director’s finest hour. It’s also, perhaps unsurprisingly, very bloody, with the great Tom Savini on hand to lay on the gruesome effects (and, a la Dawn of the Dead, act in a minor role). And it’s a very funny film in places, maybe Romero’s wittiest, with Martin’s exasperated attempts to explain the nature of his vampirism to a sleazy phone-in radio DJ being nothing short of hilarious.

Martin is also available in a slightly different, Italian-language version, edited by Romero’s great mate Dario Argento, and featuring musical mayhem from none other than Goblin. For first-timers, however, I’d recommend the original; a unique and intelligent take on the vampire myth.

Profondo Rosso (1975)

“What horror movies seemed like when you were too young to get in to see them.” Alas, not my words, but the words of Time Out magazine, summarising the work of Dario Argento. I have yet to hear a more apt appraisal of the maestro’s talents, and it’s one I would most certainly apply to his greatest film; Profondo Rosso.

Please forgive me if you feel I’m being pretenious by neglecting to use its English title, Deep Red, but I was lumbered with an appallingly edited, dubbed version of the film bearing that title sometime in the mid-90s, and I instinctively use the Italian title to differentiate. I refuse to apologise, however, if you feel I should have selected Suspiria instead. Come on! We’ve just been through all this with George Romero! I will justify my selection by saying that Suspiria is, of course, an absolute masterpiece, however, as are several other Dario Argento films, including his debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. But, one of the things I like best about Profondo Rosso is the way it marries the breathless, mysterious Giallo style of Argento’s earlier films with the more fragmented, evocative supernatural power of his later films, most notably Suspiria. In my mind, at least, it is the definitive Argento film.

Regular readers may remember Days Are Numbers exhaustive Giallo bumper special a few months back, in which we laid out a potted history of these very Italian, very violent murder-mystery/horror hybrids. Profondo Rosso is very much in the Giallo mould, but here Argento takes the genre (which he helped to popularise) and does to it what his traditionally black glove-clad killer does to their many victims in the film. Takes it to bloody pieces. David Hemmings stars as a jazz pianist who witnesses the murder of a psychic (who had earlier claimed she could feel the presence of a killer at one of her meetings), but having failed to catch a glimpse of the killer’s mush, attempts to solve the mystery with the assistance of a fiesty female journalist. The more bizarre the case becomes, as Hemmings’ investigation leads him to a decrepit house with a dark secret, the higher the body count mounts. Very soon he has good reason to fear for his own life.

I’ll spare you an outpouring of superlatives and simply say this; Profondo Rosso is bloody brilliant. Nerve-jangling, brutal, darkly psychedelic, absolutely mesmerising (ok, that’s a few superlatives); I’d heartily recommend any Argento film (up to Trauma, at least), but Profondo Rosso is something else altogether compared to even its brothers and sisters. Goblin’s soundtrack is belting and bonkers, to boot. Naturally.

Targets (1968)

We got the ball rolling (in part one) with a Roger Corman film, and here, halfway through part two, we encounter the great man again. He’s not behind the camera this time, but instead flexing his creative muscle as a shrewd and resourceful producer, helping one of his numerous talented proteges crank out an ingenious and inventive modern horror film.

It’s remarkable to think that we wouldn’t even have Targets to enjoy had it not been for the fact that horror legend Boris Karloff owed Corman three days’ work. Many other producers would have simply written this meagre debt off, but not our Roger. He got on the blower to talented youngster Peter Bogdanovich and told him he would produce his first feature provided he cast Karloff and use him for three days. The second part of the brief stipulated that Bogdanovich would be required to include footage from the film Corman had just made with Karloff, The Terror, which starred another Corman discovery, Jack Nicholson.

Unfazed by this challenge, Bogdanovich sought help in devising a suitable storyline in which to include all these elements by calling on another mercurial movie maverick, Samuel Fuller. Possibly the greatest filmmaker most people have never heard of (more info on Days Are Numbers in the coming month), Fuller helped Bogdanovich craft an absolute peach of an idea; Karloff plays a loosely fictionalised version of himself, an elderly, Hollywood-era horror star named Byron Orlok. Increasingly tired and jaded, Orlok is touring the drive-in circuit to promote his new film, which looks suspicously like The Terror. Oh, hang on. IT IS The Terror. Being met with a subdued response, Orlok ponders the relevance of his traditional brand of wordy and theatrical horror in an increasingly violent and outrageous world. Meanwhile, an all-American boy and Vietnam veteran (whose rigid and mundane life we have been observing in snippets throughout) snaps suddenly across town and begins gunning down random passers-by, before making his way to the very same drive-in at which Orlok is appearing to continue his killing spree. It is here that the old school screen monster Orlok must confront a new, nihilistic horror.

If that’s not one of the best ideas for a film ever, then I don’t know what is. And Targets is indeed one of my favourite films ever. Hats off to everyone involved for a great job well done, from the ever-resourceful Corman for getting it off the ground, to Bogdanovich and Fuller for dreaming up a dynamite premise that is both exciting and intelligent, and still sadly relevant today. Bogdanovich would never direct another horror film, although he would turn in some wacko sci-fi for Corman (Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women), before becoming one of the most successful film directors of the early to mid 70s. He would later become one of the most derided and least loved film directors of the late 70s and 80s. Perhaps unfairly, but that’s another story.

Whilst not Karloff’s final film as is often widely misreported (he would slum it in Spain for a year or so after), Targets comes close enough to fit as a sterling swansong for a bona fide horror legend. Giving a charming and sad performance, Karloff reminds us just what a wonderful actor the man behind Frankenstein’s monster truly was.

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968)

Not technically a film-film, Whistle… weighs in at a mere 42 mins. long, and was never given a cinema release. It was instead made for BBC television’s seminal arts strand Omnibus, and directed by surely one of the least likely horror directors of all time.

To this day Jonathan Miller is still most famous as one-quarter of Britain’s pre-eminent pre-Python comedy troupe, Beyond the Fringe. Largely remembered for giving the world the far from inconsiderable gifts of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, BTF also housed treasured monolguist and writer Alan Bennett and, of course, Jonathan Miller, in their salad days, both of whom were as funny as their more celebrated peers, but neither of whom pursued a career in comedy following the group’s split. Immediately after, Miller found himself at the head of the BBC’s arts department, and directed two literary adaptations for TV; Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and Whistle and I’ll Come to You, based on a story by M.R. James.

Anyone who’s read at least a handful of stories by M.R. James (and I don’t mean to disparage his abilities, I’m a big fan) will know that he is fond of one story template in particular; stuffy, cynical English academic goes on rural holiday, finds strange, ancient artefact buried somewhere, pockets artefact, then gets haunted by ghost of some kind until mysteriously dies/replaces artefact. So it is with Whistle…, which could transfer a little flat and formulaic if brought to the screen by a lesser hand, but fortunately Miller possesses the skills to make it absolutely riveting.

The artefact in question here is, suitably enough, a whistle, chanced upon by stuffy, cynical Professor Parkins whilst enjoying a ramble on holiday on the Suffolk coast. Parkins pockets the whistle, after giving it a quick blow, and for the rest of his walk, and his holiday, he is stalked by a large dark figure in the distance, looming ever closer and more threateningly. One of the masterstrokes pulled off by Miller is to illustrate the stark difference in atmosphere and mood between night and day. Contrasting the scenes which take place during the day time, in which the pompous Parkins makes tart remarks to himself during conversation with his fellow hotel guests, with those at night, with Parkins plagued by surreal, terrifying nightmares, makes for interesting viewing, and it is a ploy I have not seen used in quite the same way in any other horror film. Miller also handles the sequences of Parkins being followed by the figure along desolate shorelines beautifully, but it is the final sequence that is worthy of the highest praise. The finale employs eerie, stop-motion effects and jagged editing superbly to bring something utterly terrible to life. It is still powerful and frightening to this day, although Channel 4 ruined it for millions recently by showing the end in its near-entirety on the channel’s 100 Scariest Moments countdown. A more than admirable choice, all the same.

A true renaissance man in a time when some will apply the term to even Justin Timberlake, Jonathan Miller tired of film directing even quicker than he tired of comedy, and went off to become a sculptor, neurologist, author and God-knows-what-else. Based on the evidence here, it was a great loss, but his earlier Alice in Wonderland (with an all-star cast, including Peters’ Sellers and Cook) is equally well-worth watching and his one full-length feature film, another literary adaptation, Kingsley Amis’ Take a Girl Like You (released 1970, starring Oliver Reed) is about to be released on DVD after decades of unavailability. Hurrah! The late Michael Horden, superb as Professor Parkins in Whistle…, also deserves props. A lengthy and colourful career, he both narrated Kubrick’s masterpiece Barry Lyndon and appeared alongside Frankie Howerd in the film of Up Pompeii. Titter ye not! 

  

The Wicker Man (1973)

I almost felt like leaving out the “1973″ above as an act of defiance. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to know when The Wicker Man was made, I’m sure everybody already does, it’s just that I loathe the idea that it’s nowadays required to differentiate the seminal, sublime original from the terrible, turgid remake.

Easily the most famous film on the second part of our list, The Wicker Man has gone onto become a bona fide cultural phenomenon, and watching it is almost a rites-of-passage type thing. One of the first things I normally ask people when the subject of The Wicker Man arises in conversation is whether or not they knew how it was going to end before they saw it. I alas, did know, and feel somewhat envious of those who didn’t, as in an era when hackneyed and contrived twist endings are commonplace in films, The Wicker Man’s denouement is a true stroke of dark genius. However, even if you do know how it’s going to end, The Wicker Man is still the most engrossing, enrapturing British horror film (perhaps) ever made.

Telly hardman Edward Woodward gives an expertly measured performance as a staunchly Christian copper summoned to a remote Scottish island to search for a missing girl. Once there he finds himself entangled in a web of intrigue seemingly constructed by corrupt English nobleman Lord Summerisle, who presides over the whole island, which is also called Summerisle like wot he is. The entire populace of Summerisle happen to be pagans, which obviously rattles our pious pig, with the locals first unsettling him, and then, apparently, threatening him. And just who is this “Wicker Man”? As if you don’t all know.

The remake of The Wicker Man is, of course, grossly inferior to the original in every way. In fact the remake of The Wicker Man is grossly inferior to most films in every way. However, one of the most hideously wrong things about the remake is that they chose to invent their own credibility-sapping religion (something about bees and Nazi feminism), which contributed to the whole affair’s damnation to failure. This, in turn, is one of the prized assets that the original can boast, and something that gives it even greater resonance. The fact that within and just without Britain’s Christian shores there remains remnants of a dark, pagan past where sinister things can apparently happen. Indeed, Halloween itself, which we are celebrating on this list, survives from that very past.

The Wicker Man also boasts a production history that is as unique and complex as the film itself. It’s much too long a story to get into, but I can heartily recommend the excellent commentary track on the terrific Anchor Bay DVD release, featuring a bagful of interesting anecdotes from Christopher Lee. The iconic star of nearly 300 films (many of them horror), Lee has always maintained that The Wicker Man is the best thing he’s ever done, and who’s going to argue? It’s certainly the best thing director Robin Hardy has ever done, although given the level of fame enjoyed by The Wicker Man, his only other film of note, The Fantasist, deserves to be at least a bit better known, despite not being very good. After years of trying, Hardy has finally succeeded in mounting his long-planned Wicker Man sequel, the almost alarmingly titled Cowboys for Christ. It’s hard to know what to expect, but at least it’s guaranteed to be better than The Wicker Man remake. Sadly, it won’t boast the writing talents of original Wicker Man scribe Anthony Shaffer, who also penned the twice-filmed hit stageplay Sleuth, as well as Frenzy, for Alfred Hitchcock, and who passed away in 2001.

Witchfinder General (1968)

Completing our list is a film that deserves to be as famous as The Wicker Man, in my opinion, and a film that may yet come close to achieving such a level of fame as it continues to grow in stature. It also completes two hat-tricks on this second half of the list; a hat-trick of films made in 1968 (what a great year for horror), and a hat-trick of career-redefining films from horror icons. We’ve already had Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee. Now it’s the turn of Vincent Price.

Price stars as the witch-hunter and torturer of the title, actual historic figure Matthew Hopkins, except if director Michael Reeves had had his way the old ghoul wouldn’t have been allowed near the thing to begin with. Reeves really wanted another horror stalwart, Donald Pleasance, to play the lead, and considered Price too waspish and campy. This is not a massively surprising conclusion for the young director to have arrived at, considering Price’s most recent credits at the time included the role of Egghead in the Batman TV series, and a film called Dr. Goldfoot and the Sex Bombs (albeit directed by Mario Bava). However, the decision was not Reeves’ to make as American International Pictures were stumping up the cash, and counted Price as a treasured contract player (he had spent the early 60s making a series of fantastic Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with Roger Corman at AIP). So, Price it was to be.

And a good thing too, as despite numerous on-set arguments and clashes, Price proved Reeves wrong and put in a poised and dead-eyed performance in a film that still astounds with its unflinching sadism to this day. Reeves has described Witchfinder General as a western set in East Anglia, during the English Civil War of the 17th century, and indeed, the film does have a distinct gunslinger tang to it. Maliciously touring the war-torn English countryside carrying out his grim trade of accusing innocent young women of witchcraft and murdering them for profit, Hopkins encounters Roundhead soldier Richard Marshall, who unaware of what he’s doing, gives Hopkins directions to his hometown. Once there, Hopkins chooses Marshall’s beloved and her clergyman uncle as his latest victims, and soon numbers the disillusioned soldier as his number one enemy. Marshall sets out for revenge, but does the shrewd and sadistic Hopkins wield too much power in these troubled times?

An excellent storyline, and if it seems a little superficially slender, don’t worry. Michael Reeves places numerous scenes of cruel and brutal torture throughout the film, which created a minor outrage on its release. In fact, one of the film’s leading opponents was none other than Jonathan Miller’s old Beyond the Fringe chum Alan Bennett, who decried the film as morbid and thoroughly unenjoyable, and claimed watching it made him feel dirty. Reeves responded by stating that the violence of Witchfinder General was not meant to be enjoyed, but that he would love the opportunity to watch Bennett try and scrub himself clean. Despite being a distant cousin of then BBFC big cheese John Trevelyan, Reeves’ film would be shorn of several minutes, which have subsequently been restored and are still incrediby shocking. The film also boasts a belter of an ending, and if not exactly as surprising as the final scene of The Wicker Man, it easily matches it for bleakness. An unforgettable, harrowing lesson in the futility of violent revenge.

Michael Reeves is the great lost talent of British cinema. A scarcely believable mere 25-years-old when he died a year after Witchfinder General’s release, Reeves is also responsible for another dark and intoxicatingly imaginitive British horror, The Sorcerers, which he made with Boris Karloff in 1967. I had a headache deciding whether or not I should include The Sorcerers or Witchfinder General on the list, and the earlier film missed out only just. A brilliant tale of bitter old folks controlling jaded youngsters through mind control, expect it to make a full appearance on these pages very soon. Reeves’ first film, The She Beast, is also very good, if hamstrung by a zero-budget and nowhere near as sophisticated as his later two (running 74 min. long, more than a third of the film is taken up by a elaborate car chase!). It does, however, feature several early glimpses of his supreme, ruthless talent, not to mention his dark humour.

It’s impossible to guess where Reeves would have gone next, and before his untimely death from an apparent suicide bid, he had already pulled out of filming his next production, The Oblong Box, a Poe story starring Vincent Price (Witchfinder General is known as The Conqueror Worm in the US, after a Poe poem, to cash in on the Price connection). Had he lived longer, I believe we would have been guaranteed several more films as masterful as those he left us, but at least we’ll always have those.

Well, thanks for being patient and keeping up the pretence that Halloween is still occurring. I hope you enjoyed the list, and please forgive me for any glaring omissions. I’ve decided not to think about it, as I don’t want to kick myself too hard for leaving brilliant things out (i.e. “The Birds? Doh!”). You may also have noticed that we in fact covered 14 films, rather than the promised 13. The decision to throw another one in was meant to both trick and treat, in keeping with the spirit of the season. Also, 13 is too darn unlucky.

Anyway, until next year… Happy haunting!

(NB: Please stay tuned for the third and final part of Days Are Number’s banned series. It’s comin’ to get ya!)          

 

Tags anthony shaffer boris karloff cheryl smith christopher lee dario argento david hemmings deep red edward woodward george a romero giallo goblin greatest horror films halloween horror john amplas jonathan miller lemora: a child's tale of the supernatural lesly gilb martin michael horden michael reeves mr james peter bogdanovich profondo rosso richard blackburn robin hardy roger corman samuel fuller targets the wicker man tom savini vincent price whistle and i'll come to you witchfinder general