2009: Antichrist

Lars von Trier is a director that has nothing on his mind but to deliver extreme emotional experiences to his audiences. That's fine with me, though in this shocker - about a couple retreating to the woods after their son's death - at times he's trying a little too hard. Even so, the somewhat Lynchesque film, which features the usual imagery like imposing trees, insects, talking foxes and a woman cutting her clit off - is a coherent and attractive audiovisual system. (7)

1971: Straw Dogs

Goodness gracious! If you are looking for a film to make you really, really aggressive, I recommend this one featuring Dustin Hoffman as a nerdy American mathematician whom the locals in his new, English home village dislike. Of course, things get out of hand. Everybody involved certainly did a very effective job on this one - the screenplay in particular is well-constructed - but an enjoyable experience this is not. (unrated)

1960: Village of the Damned

In an English village, a number of children are born who have apparently been begat by aliens and who are blond, precocious and eerily powerful in this crisp, entertaining and totally nonscary old horror/sf film. (7)

1968: Night of the Living Dead

George A. Romero's template for pretty much all zombie films to follow it is visibly cheap, but not all that trashy and reasonably diverting, but no more. (6)

1997: Kiss the Girls

Filmed in the standard turn-of-the-century-American-suspense-film cinematography, this movie about a pervert kidnapper, a victim and a policeman reliably takes us from one plot point to another, but fails to make the audience care about the characters. (6)

2007: I Am Legend

After a supposed cure for cancer went all wrong, Will Smith appears to be the only human survivor who was not zombiefied. Being, in large part, responsible for the mess, he is trying to find a cure while staying alive in the face of zombie attacks. - Yeah, you could say it's all a bit disjointed in terms of plot and isn't really going anywhere, but the general athmosphere, driven by the excellent production design and cinematography, does enough for me to make this thoroughly enjoyable. (7)

1958: Dracula (a.k.a. Horror of Dracula)

The first film to star Christopher Lee as the Count is too trashy to be reasonably good and not trashy enough to be so bad it's good, but still a decent bit of afternoon entertainment. (6)

1960: Les yeux sans visage (Eyes without a Face)

A dead girl is found who's missing her facial skin. A surgeon's daughter, alive, is missing her facial skin. Coincidence? I think not! - The B-ish French b/w shocker is jolly good fun overall, but a bit slow at times; a good editor, I think, would have cut it down from 86 minutes to 75 or so, which is a good length for a film. (6.5)

2002: The Mothman Prophecies

Basically, what happens in this film is that Richard Gere talks on the phone to an omnisicient moth that's up to no good. The movie doesn't seem as stupid as that sounds; rather, it's a decent thriller of the supernatural using standard noughties mainstream film aesthetics. The disappointing ending is less disappointing for it disappointingness being visible from half an hour away. Still a 6 overall, though.

If this film had been more successful, maybe we could have hoped for Mothman vs. Kraken, à la Alien vs. Predator. Alas, it's not to be.

1935: Bride of Frankenstein

While I found the original Frankenstein charmingly silly, the sequel is more charmlessly stupid in my book - there are even little people in bottles. There are also bad technical glitches. (5)

2010: Shutter Island

The first half or so of Scorsese's film about two agents investigating on a kind of Alcatraz for the criminally insane has an extremely well-crafted plot, but the ending is extremely poor - indeed, my enjoyment of the film was heightened because I discounted early hints about the ending thinking that they couldn't possibly go for something that lame. Also, Scorsese generally doesn't seem at the top of his game, the music's poor and the back projections' quality made me wonder whether they were intended as a deliberate hommage to Hitchcock. Having said all that, of course if Martin Scorsese directs a thriller based on a Dennis Lehane book it's going to be a good film. (7)

1963: The Haunting

If you're a woman in her twenties still living with you're mother, then you're in trouble - or at least that's what horror films shot around 1960 would have you believe. As though trying to provide an example for the how-not-to box in the textbook, The Haunting uses voiceover to present us with the clichéd thoughts of such a spinster who is participating with two other subjects and a researcher interested in paranormal phenomena to spend some time in an allegedly haunted house. Today the film takes its entertainment value more from its quaíntness than from any shock value it might once have had, but the b/w photography is among the best examples of its kind. (6.5)

1980: Altered States

A brilliant scientist tries to find the essence of the self using unusual methods, which turns out to be a bad idea. The longer it goes on, the harder it gets to take it seriously. (5)

1980: The Fog

I like simplicity, but John Carpenter, based on my sample, takes things a little too far in this respect. But the idea of a deadly fog coming to getcha is nice and the film, set in a California coast town, has a good sense of place and features accomplished cinematography. Quite decent entertainment, all in all. (6.5)

1932: Vampyr

Though the recency of the sound film invention still shows in this 1932 sort-of-horror film, it manages to create a somewhat Lost-Highwayesque dreamy athmosphere and is much more convincing as an aesthetic exercise than the similarly-themed 1922 Nosferatu or 1931 Dracula, both of which are nothing but unintentionally funny today. (7)

1976: Halloween

It's set on the kind of America I think I have seen on the screen once or twice before: Everyone lives in the generic suburb, the boys play football, the girls are cheerleaders. The story: A dangerous madman escapes from an institution and proceeds to kill people in the suburb. That's it. No plot twists, no nothing. Great cinematography, but apart from that it's a bore, and I don't think that's because it has served as a template for so many films that came later. Oh, and, as usual, director John Carpenter wouldn't let anyone else compose the music. Bernard Herrman he is not. (5)

1978: The Fury

Not the sequel to The Sound, hahaha!, but a Brian De Palma thriller combining the topics of secret government agencies and extraordinary psychic powers, culled, it seems from a million B-movies. The acting's o.k. and the movie's not too impressive visually, but it still manages to entertain: A tight script goes a long way! (7)

1961: The Innocents

It is set in a 19th-century English country house and it's a good old-fashioned ghost story, complete with moving curtains and a little girl humming an eerie tune. Excellently filmed in clear black and white by Freddie Francis, the movie's a thoroughly stylish experience. Early on, The Innocents reminded me of the 2001 The Others with Nicole Kidman and I suspected that the latter was a a remake of the former. More accurately, they're both based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Both films are about equally good. (7)

And while we're at it: The job interview scene early in the film with its oh, there's another thing I feel I must tell you bit is strongly remindful of The Shining. Did Kubrick and his coauthor Diane Johnson take that trick from The Innocents? Or was it in Stephen King's book? And if so, did he get it from James? It seems I have a bit of reading to do.

1942: Cat People

A man marries a Romanian immigrant despite her telling him some mumbo-jumbo about "cat people". Then she starts acting funny - is it just a mental health problem or is she turning into one of those mysterious cat persons?

This setup makes the film into a strange hybrid of marriage drama and horror film, not really succeeding on either front. Yes, the film features some nice shadowplay and many examples of the trick of drawing attention to something because we don't see it (later perfected in Blair Witch Project), but it also features tedious dialogues and a poor narrative structure. (5.5)

1943: I Walked with a Zombie

The nurse Betsy Connell is hired to care for Jessica Holland, who lives with her husband on a Caribbean island where they do the voodoo. Jessica appears to be caught in a state of constant sleepwalking. Is it a mental illness - or is Jessica a zombie? - The film is only 68 minutes long, but especially in the first half it appears that's too much for the little story there is. Though it's considered a minor classic, I found it to be just the B-picture that it actually is, although the last three or so minutes are really strong. (5.5)