1970s

House (1977)

House (1977)

This is the kind of movie that you might dream about making when you're eight or nine and have figured out that movies don't just happen, but they're made. Before you have any kind of regard or understanding of act structure or traditional storytelling. It’s a radical descent through stratum after stratum of artificiality that consistently left me wondering at every turn whether what I was seeing was real. Is it real to the characters or are these young fabulists taking me on constant detours through their own subjective experiences and imaginations?

The Mephisto Waltz (1971)

The Mephisto Waltz (1971)

Frankly, it's not hard to see the similarities between the two, between Rosemary's Baby and The Mephisto Waltz, or at least the imprint of one on the other. We've got this educated passing for sophisticated, sufficiently urbane couple, and they're drawn in by a pair of Satanists of indeterminate age, and then they get involved in magic that benefits the Satanists more than the sweet young couple. So it's a little bit Faustian, but it's got jazz hands.

Theatre of Blood (1973)

Theatre of Blood (1973)

Vincent Price in the role of Edward Sheridan Lionheart is going to chew the scenery so boldly and so vividly in the kinds of important theatrical roles he always wanted to play, but felt his stature and reputation in horror cinema kept out of his reach. Luckily for Vincent Price, and by extension for us, Lionheart's final season was a survey of some of the biggest and juiciest roles in Shakespeare's canon. The Shakespeare plays contained in Theatre of Blood were more likely than not chosen for the inventiveness with which characters are dispatched than for the significance of the plays themselves, but Price does get to wrap his mouth around monologues from Hamlet, Richard III, Shylock, and on and on.

The Dunwich Horror (1970)

The Dunwich Horror (1970)

I think the goal in making a Lovecraftian horror film is a kind of balance. With Lovecraft, if something is hard to think about, then it's hard to put into words. And if it's hard to express verbally, then it's nearly impossible to show. Fabulous creatures tinged with a hint of sci-fi with a story that conjures the internal emotions and abstract themes of like a Bergman film. It's Buñuel with slime from the intersection of time and space.

Black Christmas (1974)

Black Christmas (1974)

In addition to being a prototypical slasher film, this is the first seasonal slasher movie, or a horror movie that takes place on a holiday, and of course right on its heels would come things like Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN in 1978 and FRIDAY THE 13TH in 1980; plus things like PROM NIGHT, MOTHER’S DAY, MY BLOODY VALENTINE, and SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, which is of course another Christmas horror movie.

The Wicker Man (1973)

The Wicker Man (1973)

I find it to be smart and literate, and I think it gives people a lot to chew on and discuss both in terms of what it presents narratively and visually, and what it proposes philosophically. It's filled with symbolism and foreshadowing, and it doesn't rely on the usual tricks of jump scares or gore to destabilize the viewer.

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