Robert Wise’s The Haunting remains one of the creepiest haunted house films ever made, despite the fact that you never actually see a ghost. Instead, it’s all shadows, creaking doors, ominous wallpaper, and the fragile unravelling of Julie Harris’s nerves. What Wise delivered wasn’t a carnival of scares, but a psychological chamber piece that still…
Peeping Tom (1960) – Review
There are horror films that creep up on you, and then there are horror films that stare you dead in the face through the viewfinder of a camera. Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom is one of the latter: a film so unnerving, so ahead of its time, that it destroyed Powell’s career, and only later was…
Beauty and the Beast (1962) – Review
Somewhere in the early 1960s, American International Pictures looked at a centuries-old fairy tale and thought, “What if we did this quickly and on a budget?” The result is the 1962 Beauty and the Beast, directed by Edward L. Cahn and featuring creature make-up by horror legend Jack Pierce, which at least gives the production…
The Creeping Terror (1964) – Review
Some horror movies are so terrifying that you can’t sleep at night. The Creeping Terror is so terrifying that you might not stay awake at all. This 1964 “monster” movie is the kind of thing that makes you wonder if Ed Wood had an evil twin who was even worse at his job.
The Horror of Party Beach (1964) – Review
Some films are so bad they circle back around to being fun. Others are so bad they leave you with a headache and an existential crisis. The Horror of Party Beach is both; it’s a movie that wants to be a teen beach musical, a gore-soaked monster movie, and a public service announcement about nuclear…