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Black Female Horror Directors – Part I

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Representation is important, in front of and behind the camera. While I’m not one to say that films should never be made about certain communities by those who are not from those communities (a White, British guy can make a great movie centered on an African American neighborhood – see Candyman (1992)), I do think it is important that people be given the opportunity to tell their own stories. This isn’t only a matter of parity, of the fairness of self-representation; it’s good for the art. When members of under-represented groups tell their own tales, there may be different points of focus, new perspectives, the camera may be pointed in places someone from without may not have thought to point it, and we all benefit from a wider range of life experience being committed to film.

With that in mind, February is “Black History Month” (at least in America, where I’m from) and until quite recently, it was also “Women in Horror Month” (though as of 2022, the organizers have opted for a more year-long approach). Therefore, I thought it might be a good project to try some horror films, all new for me, made by Black female directors. I will say though, as sometimes occurs when seeking to fill a representational gap, an initial search has not turned up so many to choose from (echoes of the other week when I had trouble finding a “Lesbian Vampire film” made by an LGBT+, female identifying director, or a vampire for that matter). But I have found some, so let’s check a couple out.

As I haven’t seen these before and don’t know how much there will be to discuss, it’s possible that these will be shorter reviews and therefore, I’ll endeavor to keep them spoiler free.

Eve’s Bayou (1997)

Right off the bat, before any reader objects – ok, I do have some trouble counting this as a horror film. It’s got rich, steamy Louisiana atmosphere. It’s got some death. Psychic elements. Maybe ghosts. Hoodoo death curses. But the mood is overwhelmingly that of a period drama rather than horror – it feels like an adaptation of some worthy historical novel. Still, it was listed as “horror” on IMDB and I remember it being discussed in the excellent Horror Noir (2019) documentary, detailing Black representation in Horror films, so here it is; and I do think it has value worth discussing, even if it’s a stretch to include it in the genre.

While her feature directorial debut may only tangentially relate to horror, as an actor, Kasi Lemmons had already held key roles in the genre (fulfilling the trope of Black best friend to the White female lead in Silence of the Lambs and Candyman). Just a few years later, she wrote and directed this deeply personal film which Roger Ebert (not always a friend to Horror) named the best of the year (it was also the most profitable independent film of 1997).

A 60s period piece set in the small town of Eve’s Bayou, outside of New Orleans, the film centers on a ten year old girl named Eve, whom we know from the opening narration by the end of the summer will kill her father, that threat of violence hanging over the rest of the proceedings. Eve’s father is a successful doctor and their family is local royalty of sorts, descended from a Famous French general and the freed slave woman to whom he’d dedicated the town. Her father, Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson), is also a notorious philanderer and this is the source of no small amount of family drama. Jackson brings so much easy charm to the role, and you can see how women would be drawn to him, as well as how easily he could manipulate his wife and family. It’s refreshing to see him play a character with so little bluster, so much warmth, and such deep dysfunction under the surface. It’s no wonder that he came on the project as a producer – it’s a great part.

Eve’s aunt (Louis’s sister) has psychic premonitions, which it seems Eve shares, and works as a kind of spiritual therapist, assisting townspeople with their own traumas, while suffering greatly herself, cursed as she is to always outlive her husbands (so far, she’s been through three). And rounding out the spiritual cast, there is the local Hoodoo woman who tells fortunes that aren’t always so nice and has no qualms about dealing with darker magics if the price is right. Otherwise, the film focuses on the relationships between Eve, her mother, her older sister, and her younger brother, as they navigate the personal betrayals, the hazy visions of something tragic looming in their future, and the crazy-making emotions and impulses of childhood and adolescence. Much of the film is borne by the young performers and while they may not hit every beat, they do an admirable job of carrying a great deal of emotional weight.

I can’t say that I was totally captivated at every turn by the story (though there were surely strong moments and elements), but I did appreciate the representational project. Inspired by family trips to Louisiana in her childhood, Lemmons gives so much attention to small details of this community, its people, its spirituality and superstitions, and its aspirations – and it is noteworthy that this is a different kind of small, rural, southern Black populace than is usually portrayed on film. This is a fairly well-to-do middle class society, in which the Batistes stand out for their money and position. This isn’t a story about poverty, the ghosts of slavery, or the struggle for Civil Rights – this is a thriving population full of its own characters and stories and dramas, with no need to look further afield for greater significance. Notably, there doesn’t seem to be a single White person in the cast (plenty of films might feature an all-White cast without drawing notice). The story is self-contained – about Eve and her family and their troubles – we look through their eyes and not those of some outside perspective intended to purportedly help a mainstream White audience connect.

By the end of the film, her father is indeed dead – but did she actually kill him? That is in doubt. There have been dark revelations, but those revelations have also been cast into doubt. All is subjective and nothing is very certain. To paraphrase the closing narration, the past and the future can both be seen, but both change depending on the light. Lemmons succeeded in bringing a similarly personal emotionality to it all, focusing her lens on a time and a place, on nuances of character and society that another filmmaker might not have been so drawn to. I still have trouble calling it “Horror” per se, but it is a work of value and I’m glad to have given it a chance.

Master (2022)

Mariama Diallo’s directorial feature debut, which she also wrote, does clearly situate itself more firmly in the genre, though by the end it’s thrown into question whether anything has actually been supernatural or if this has all really been more of a psycho-social, allegorical drama. Regardless, it does feel like a horror movie, particularly through its first two acts, and that’s enough for me. Past that, it is a very different piece than the preceding film. Whereas Eve’s Bayou stood out for its focus on the nuances of life within its geographically and culturally specific Louisiana Black community, Master directly sets its crosshairs on the current experience of being Black in America writ large, particularly when navigating contexts historically dominated by rich White people, in this case, Academia.

 I will say, before going into full detail, that the film is really rich in ideas, lived experiences, and an entirely unsettling, oppressive sense of dread and discomfort. That said, sometimes there is just so much going on in terms of a possible ghost story, the echoes of a witch hanging, the specter of slavery and/or Black servitude, and the contemporary ‘micro-aggressions’ and mendacity both encountered and perpetrated by our protagonists that I have difficulty pulling the threads together. Are these the failings of an over-ambitiously messy first feature, or is the intention to make an evocative, disturbing mélange of a film rather than telling a totally straightforward story? If the former, it is still such an overall success that it’s easy to forgive the ways it doesn’t quite gel by the end. If the latter, it is quite effective in its goal, though it does suffer somewhat for having created initial expectations of, let’s say, typical genre-based narrative coherence which it seems to lose interest in during the final stretch.

We follow two Black women at a prestigious New England University which is notably homogeneous. Jasmine, a freshman housed in a dorm room which may be haunted, in which the school’s first Black student had hanged herself years ago, is one of perhaps 8 or 9 Black students on campus. Gail is one of the only Black members of the faculty, and has just been made the “Master” of the students’ house that Jasmine lives in. Being a Master is prestigious and Gail is the first Black professor to hold such a position. Almost immediately, both of them begin to experience spooky stuff. Portraits of the school’s founder suddenly appear skeletal, maggots seem to spontaneously generate in surprising places, dreams are haunted by ghostly premonitions, spindly clawed hands reach out from beneath beds, and mysterious cloaked figures loom in the night.

All of these typical Horror trappings are seamlessly interwoven with similarly discomforting socio-racial dynamics. Jasmine sees an older Black cafeteria worker warmly coddling all of the White students only to get the cold shoulder when she approaches. Gail finds countless racist artifacts in her new “Master” chambers, such as a “Mammy” cookie jar or remnants of Black servants’ quarters. Jasmine tries to fit in with her roommate’s rich friends, but they all (barely) subtly treat her more like the help than like a peer. Gail suspects that her rise in status is thanks more to optics than respect, and that her colleagues mainly want her in the position to clean up the school’s historical image. And most dramatically, Jasmine suffers direct harassment, with racist images and nooses hung on her dorm room door.

It is the primary strength of the film that all of these elements seem to carry equal weight as the intimations of supernatural threat. I think this is mutually beneficial – the horror movie tropes are given greater emotional weight by being linked with the real world issues and the examination of socio-racial discomfort benefits from being accurately framed as “horror.” All of it is dreadful. All of it is scary. All of it communicates the message that “you are not welcome here – you are not wanted – leave while you can,” and at the same time, both women are justified in wanting to stick it out, to not give up, to not let it all get to them. They want to be stronger than that and not be defeated by this ugliness. Ultimately though, the ugly, the danger, the ghosts of the past are really quite a force to be reckoned with.

The clawed figure that haunts Jasmine’s dreams and pushes her towards the window from which past students have jumped is scary, but is it scarier than when she finds herself the only Black person at a party, surrounded by White students aggressively shouting along to a rap song, gleefully screaming the N-word at her and making gorilla sounds? This is filmed as a horror scene, and rightly so. Gail is largely aware of what Jasmine is going through, having been there before herself, but she can’t look through her eyes, can’t always be there to push back against the social weight. And she is pulled in other directions, navigating her own issues in the school, particularly the racial overtones surrounding the possible advancement of the school’s only other Black, female professor. There’s only so much she can do.

By the end, the supernatural element fades to the background or is even consciously abandoned – either it was always metaphoric, or it just can’t compete with the human social forces that make life for the two of them at this school, which they’ve both worked so hard to get to, so very unbearable. Shortly before this, perhaps putting a cap on the possible ghost story, Gail tells Jasmine, “It’s not ghosts. It’s not supernatural. It’s America, and it’s everywhere.” It’s a bleak turn – it would be so much easier if there was just a scary ghost to appease, or even if that weren’t possible, to know that it could only haunt so many, only hurt so many. But nope – Gail knows that what Jasmine’s experiencing can’t be run away from; it is just the world that they inhabit.

In the end, though, both characters do leave the university in their ways, but as Gail walks off campus for the last time (after being stopped by campus security and asked to show her faculty ID), we see the night alive with service workers – garbage men, landscapers – all of them Black, just doing their jobs – maintaining a beautiful environment for (primarily) privileged White kids. She may leave, but nothing has changed. Perhaps nothing will change. And really, where is there to go? As I said, it’s a dark ending.

—

From one angle, these are two totally disparate films – one only tangentially connected to the supernatural and one steeped in horror conventions – one entirely set within a Black community and one focused on the tension of being Black in a “White space” – one a cohesive family drama and one a thematically broad hodgepodge of racism, literal hauntings, and social anxiety. However, the similarities are just as striking. Both were first feature films written and directed by a Black woman, and both clearly shed light on specific experiences of being a Black woman in America in a concrete time and place – these are not generalizations, but feel distinct and individualized. What a pleasure and what a value.

Sadly however, these will be the only films considered for now. This is a busy week for me outside of the blog, so this is as far as I’m going today. But February isn’t over yet and I plan to continue in this vein next time.

Poe, Corman, Price: House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death

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Sometimes when I mention to people that I’m a horror fan and even more, that I have a horror blog, I get the response of, “hey, I like horror movies, what’s good?” and I so rarely know what to tell them. I’m stymied by not knowing how to curate the best suggestion for this person in this moment. Furthermore I expect they often want something new – what’s in cinemas now, what’s just hit Netflix – and I’m always out of date. One reason for that is that I always have so much catching up to do. I feel like I’ve watched so many films, read so many books, and yet there is always so much more (so much of it, essential viewing) that I’ve not yet seen. It’s a kind of fractal experience – no matter which point you choose to dive into – any can yield endless, recursive depth to monopolize your attention, and the alternative is to surf ad infinitum upon the surface, sampling bits and bobs and still missing out on so much (Letterboxd informs me that there were 1,269 feature length horror films released in 2022 alone). So right now, I’m in the midst of a project to somewhat fill-in one significant gap – exploring more fully the works of Vincent Price – one of horror’s biggest names, whom I had previously seen shamefully little of.

So now, having thoroughly enjoyed him in Dragonwyck, House on Haunted Hill, Witchfinder General, and Theatre of Blood (all of which I’d seen previously), and House of Wax, The Last Man on Earth, and The Abominable Dr. Phibes (which I watched for last week’s post), I’m pretty excited to finally try out some of his work with Roger Corman in the iconic (if pretty loose) Poe adaptations. I’m really looking forward to this as a) I’ve really been enjoying his painstakingly mannered, and yet gently rounded performances, and b) while I still won’t be any kind of expert in his oeuvre, I at least feel like I won’t embarrass myself at a cocktail party (people can judge you harshly upon learning that you’ve never seen 1964’s The Tomb of Ligeia). So join me as I indulge in House of Usher (1960), Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). As always, there will be spoilers, so be forewarned.

House of Usher (1960)

The first of this cycle, I understand this was a departure for Corman, who had been in the habit at AIP (American International Pictures) of producing/directing two black and white films back to back, for a small budget in about ten days, intended to be released as a double bill. Wanting to paint on a larger canvas, Corman convinced those holding the purse strings to increase the budget and filming time by about 50% and let him do it wide screen in color, to go after a different corner of the market and get a larger return. Let me preface this by saying that I loved this film, but with my 2023 sense of audience tastes, I’m surprised that this was the project they chose to roll the dice on, that they were sure it was a good bet. It probably says something about how audiences have changed (for the worse) that I can’t imagine a general audience today having the patience for this slow, steady, atmospheric, beautiful picture. And the target audience was reportedly teen boys (Corman thought they’d be into it because Poe was being taught in schools at the time)! But I’m so glad they did, because House of Usher is just gorgeous.

Adapted very loosely by Richard Matheson (who wrote last week’s The Last Man on Earth), the story is incredibly simple (again – it’s hard to imagine this being a hit today – almost nothing happens). A young man, Philip Winthrop, travels through a desolate landscape to a crumbling old mansion somewhere in New England to see his fiancé, Madeline Usher. When he arrives, her brother, Roderick (Price), who has a heightened condition of the senses such that he cannot bear loud sounds, rough fabrics, or food more flavorful than a bland mash, tells him to leave as she is very ill, carrying the taint of evil that has run through the family for generations, which has furthermore corrupted the house as well as the very land itself. With her hereditary predisposition to madness and cruelty, marriage and children are quite out of the question. Roderick orders Philip to leave the two siblings to die in their rotting abode such that the curse might pass with them. Philip refuses, but after a spell of catalepsy (in which she appears dead), Roderick has Madeline prematurely buried to ensure the two will not marry. This ends badly, as you might expect.

This is not a scary film. Nothing jumps out at you, and there is no real supernatural menace. Still, the three main characters all inhabit a space of horror made physical, both in terms of pathetic fallacy, and how they are trapped and haunted by what they perceive around them. Philip has come to a house of madness wherein Roderick imprisons and attempts to murder the woman he loves – from Philip’s perspective, Roderick is a dangerous, abusive psychopath. Madeline’s whole life has been lived under the dark cloud of her brother’s horror stories, and now she finds herself caged, not allowed to live and love as she will (also, being buried alive is unpleasant and apparently drives you to madness and bloody rage). Finally, Roderick carries the most refined and tragic sense of horror, certain as he is of his dark fate and responsibility, haunted by his family’s cruel past, his fear that it might resurface making him the gentlest, most sorrowful monster imaginable.

The other actors are fine, but this is Price’s picture through and through and I think it’s my favorite performance I’ve seen from him yet. His Roderick is surely the villain of the piece, but he plays the part without a single drop of malice. Rather, suffused with warmth, tenderness, and deep resignation, he is a fully tragic figure – acting only out of his sense of ‘the good,’ making the terrible decisions he alone understands that he must make, following his sense of duty, of morality, to commit the most heinous acts, taking that sin on his shoulders because he must. Just beautiful. And so softly played.

One element of that softness is rooted in his condition, such that he cannot abide loud noises (and compared to him, Philip really seems to be shouting throughout the film – such an irritating, earnest young lover), and the delicacy with which he approaches every moment is exquisite –it is as if every second of lived experience is painful to him. But beyond the simple sensory tortures he must endure, every action and every emotion is handled with a similarly light touch. This is a very dramatic story, but Price plays it all so small, so richly but sincerely. There is no melodrama in his work – no scenery is chewed. And the result is just magnetic whenever he speaks and I lean in to catch each small inflection.

This surfaces in heartbreaking little moments, such as an interchange between Roderick and Philip viewing Madeline in her coffin before she is interred:

-At least she has found peace now.
-Has she?
-Why do you say that?
-Because I do not believe that for the Ushers there is peace hereafter.
-Is there no END to your HORRORS?
-No. None whatever… for they are not mine alone. Mere passage from the flesh cannot undo centuries of evil. There can be no peace without penalty.

If I had just read the script, I would have imagined something so different from the quiet, soft, deeply, deeply sad line readings that Price delivers here. I might expect emotions that rage like the storm incessantly buffeting his aging homestead, but his choice is so much more effective.

In the end, before the house and the family line fall to fire and are swallowed by the blackened land, Philip learns that Madeline is not yet dead and races to the cellar to free her from her tomb, and as he descends, Roderick calls after him so quietly, so defeated, “No, don’t go down there. Let her die.” And in this moment, this monstrous figure, this abusive older sibling, this dangerously crazy man, just breaks your heart. What a picture…

Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

As I continue my journey through Corman’s adaptations of Poe’s stories, I think this next entry offers a good opportunity to discuss these films as ‘adaptations.’ Also penned by Matheson, Pit and the Pendulum takes as its starting point the famous Edgar Allan Poe tale in which a man is tortured by the Spanish Inquisition, held in a chamber with a great pit in the center and a bladed pendulum swinging above. It is an effective and exciting story, painting a rich sensory picture of the terrifying ordeal, but it’s quite short. We never really learn why he’s being tortured thus, so much as we just go on the ride of his terror. Now, this “adaptation” does feature a climactic scene in which there is, in fact, a bladed pendulum swinging above a great pit – in the last ten minutes of the movie. The seventy minutes before that are entirely the work of Matheson and Corman, and while the tale does revolve around Poe-esque elements of guilt (familial and personal), premature burial, mystery, and madness, it is really its own thing (this is generally true of all their “adaptations”). I understand Poe was a commercial draw, but literary purists should probably stay away from these films. These days “fan culture” can be so critical of any departures from source materials (especially if, heavens forbid, you make a formerly white character black) – well, anyone griping on the internet about the new iteration of their favorite work from the eighties should probably be forced to listen to a Poe fan in the sixties detail the indignities they endured and they’ll find that they don’t have it so bad.

That said, this movie was an absolute blast! Whereas the first film was slow and evenly paced, depending so utterly on the strength of Price’s central performance, this is a pretty quick moving mystery that really engaged me in unraveling its threads and guessing after the culprit before building to a dramatic, spectacular climax (pit, pendulum, etc.) and closing on a wicked final laugh.

In short, a young man, Francis Barnard, travels to a Spanish castle to learn how his dear sister, Elizabeth (Barbara Steele, from the great Bava film, Black Sunday), had recently died there. Nicholas Medina (Price), her widower husband, is clearly still distraught at her death, but is also a shifty character, caught in lie after lie as he tries to cover the shameful family secret that he believes led to her demise. Concurrently, he is being haunted by her apparition, rooted in his suspicion that he may have inadvertently interred her before she was actually fully dead. A mystery ensues as Francis; Medina’s sister, Catherine; and Medina’s closest friend, Doctor Leon, uncover secret passageways, dig up the buried past, and try to determine who or what is behind the odd goings on which are slowly but surely disintegrating Medina’s mind, his sanity devoured by guilt and loss.

I don’t want to go into detail as I really did enjoy the mystery of it all, but it results in a satisfying revelation which catapults us into delightfully over-the-top territory in the final sequence, both in terms of a great horror set piece and the leaps of character that Price gets to take.

In a way, it is as if he plays two characters. The first is the pitiful, broken Nicholas Medina, crushed by the loss of his beautiful young wife, tormented by what he considers to be his own responsibility for her expiration, and haunted by a dark, shameful family secret which has scarred him since childhood. Then, late in the film, he (sort of) becomes Sebastian Medina, Nicholas’s cruel father who maintained a torture chamber in the cellar and reveled there in unhinged feats of sadism and mechanical engineering. The wild swing between the two poles of character, from Nicholas’s soft, fearful sorrow to Sebastian’s maniacal, evil vengeance is a treat to behold and is surely worth the Price of admission (that was terrible – sorry). Seriously, it is tons of fun – less nuanced perhaps than the performance in Usher, but no less captivating.

But in this case, that performance exists in the context of a truly entertaining, wild film, full of betrayal, murder, torture, and a more confident and experimental style of filmmaking than had been on display in House of Usher. Corman’s use of color and camera movement, as well as the modern, unsettling score, all tap into a feeling of something beyond mere realism. This still feels like a work of a bygone era (especially with its early gestures towards psychedelia), refined in spite of its low budget and preoccupation with the macabre, but it is easier to see how this could be a hit with its target audience: perverse, playful, and well-paced as it is (and a tidy 80 minutes, no less).  

Masque of the Red Death (1964)

The most artistically ambitious of the three I’m considering today, this film, the seventh entry in the Poe cycle, was a (comparatively) larger budgeted piece and less of a commercial success. That’s not too surprising as, for all that it is a striking, intriguing, visually stunning film that makes bold moves and is full of character and story, it feels less commercial – it is more theatrical, having traveled further afield from naturalism, and at times, even contemplative.

In his most villainous turn out of these three, Price plays Prince Prospero, a sadistic and explicitly Satanic nobleman in medieval Italy during a time of plague. He is introduced laying waste to one of his own villages, burning the place to the ground like a wealthy jerk lighting his cigar with a roll of hundred dollar bills to show just how much he doesn’t care about money. Along the way, he collects Francesca, an innocent peasant girl, taking her back to his castle for the pleasure of corrupting her and turning her from her simple, pure faith. Soon after, he learns of the spreading ‘red death’ and along with a collection of favored nobles, locks himself in to revel in decadence and debauchery until the threat beyond has passed.

His court is a wild, ridiculous, cruel place (or at least it is intended to be – some bits, such as when Prospero orders his courtiers to play animals, are meant to feel degrading, but feel pretty tame through modern eyes – but still, it is easy to see the root of characters like Game of Thrones’s King Joffrey in Price’s fickle, affably evil performance). Much of the film concerns Francesca navigating this wicked world, both threatened and tempted by its sinfulness. Along the way, we also meet a dwarf jester out for revenge (taken from another Poe tale, Hop Frog) and Prospero’s wife Juliana, who, threatened by the young girl’s presence, seeks to complete her initiation into the Satanic cult, thus securing her position and favor. By the end, as in Poe’s story (which is considerably shorter than this post), the plague gets in during a masquerade ball, and all of Prospero’s power, wealth and Satanic dealings can do nothing to protect him or his guests from the bloody disease.

These characters are all given a lot of story along the way, and the court feels fully realized, but at the end of the day, Prospero’s tale is really the heart of the film and it is a simple one. Everything else feels more than a bit peripheral. His is an interesting study – as, though the character is openly “evil,” Price often takes a gentle, warm approach, making some of his whimsical cruelty more chilling for how ‘normal’ it feels. Prospero has come to great power in a world of meaningless death and brutality. He is no more barbarous than the world around him – he is simply more powerful – he’s just better at it. And always charming and genteel, Price never needs to twirl a mustache to communicate the depths of his nihilistic inhumanity.

I was really struck by the Satanic element. An addition to the Poe story, I found it fascinating that it is never really demonized or punished. In the end, death reigns supreme and any deals Prospero has made cannot spare him, but god never shows up. Prospero, his wife, and his guests never seem judged by the film for choosing to give obeisance to the Devil. We abjure the ugliness of his monstrous sadism, but I don’t feel that Corman really wants us to recoil at Prospero taking Francesca’s cross from her and trying to cure her of her pointless peasant’s faith. In the end, he is castigated for hubris, but the devil worship just seems a natural element of this world, part and parcel with Price’s warm, genial portrayal of villainy.

And as mentioned above, this is a visually beautiful film, rich in color scheme and cinematography (by Nicolas Roeg of Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and The Witches). A classic element from the original text is Prospero’s series of rooms, each in a different color, with a different feeling, and they just pop on film so vividly, as do all visual elements of the sets and costumes and lighting. From a genuinely spooky scene of Francesca in her room, terrified of the wind and shadows and distant Satanic chanting, to surreal portents of doom in the final black room, to the village burning to the ground, to the titular masque, with its masked dancers lithely filling these monochrome chambers with bawdy lasciviousness, this whole film is such a vibrant, sumptuous space in which to dwell – as well it should be.

But while I loved this artistic splendor, I can see how it might not have performed as well with its intended audience. For example, the final sequence of the Red Death’s appearance at the masquerade ball plays out with a kind of beautiful artifice, theatrical and balletic as the partygoers begin to bleed through their skin but never play the horror of the moment. They dance silently, elegantly, as a desperate Prospero tries to escape his doom, delivered by a crimson apparition that wears his own visage. It is poetic and it lands thematically – his great power and privilege rendered so powerless, even pathetic, against the inevitable. But it’s not scary, or particularly exciting. The climax of this lavish B-picture is pure arthouse. I love it for its daring, artsy choices, but I could see how it wouldn’t be for everyone.

—

I think the artful nature of particularly this last picture highlights another aspect of Corman’s CV. Sure, he has directed and produced loads of low-budget exploitation features, but he was also the American distributor of Fellini, Berman, Truffaut, and Kurosawa. There is an artistic temperament there, and I think these three films reveal a tension between the low budget impresario of melodramatic thrill-seeking fare and the artist who found that he had more freedom to create interesting work by remaining in the world of independent genre cinema rather than subsuming his creativity to a Hollywood machine that evens everything out, making it all more the same, more palatable for the widest possible audience.

I think in this work, Vincent Price was a perfect collaborator. Throughout these three films (and I’m assuming this to be true in the other four Poe flicks Price did with Corman), as well as all of the work I’ve seen from him so far, he consistently brings a balance between artful class and high melodrama, maintaining a tension between a campy wickedness and a genuine, authentic warmth and groundedness. The way he can portray such an over-the-top villain as Prospero while leaning into an affect of tender gentleness resonates with this film’s presentation of a perverse, thrilling horror show while ruminating in nigh meditative, if also nihilistic, manner on the futility of wealth and power and the passing nature of life’s trials and tribulations.

Top Ten (New To Me) In 2022

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Sitting here the morning of New Year’s Day, staring down the fresh new year ahead of me, I want to take one more day for the past. I’m not alone in observing that it’s been a really strong year for horror. I’m not good at keeping up to date with new releases (last year I hadn’t even watched enough 2021 horror films to do a top ten list), but this year I’ve seen about 20, and I think that’s more a testament to how good things have been rather than how diligent of a fan I’ve become.

Lately, I’ve seen countless posts where people list their best (or worst) of the year and I want to hop on that bandwagon. But as I don’t want to be too repetitive on the blog and write about the same stuff again and again, some of the best films I’ve seen are ruled out (as I’ve already discussed them).  So, as I did last year, here, in no particular order, comes a list of the top ten movies (new or old) that a) were first time watches for me and b) I haven’t written about yet. I notice, looking at my list, that it leans hard into entertainment. There have been many films this year that were rich in idea and feeling, which I really felt the need to write about at length and explore. Most (though not all) of the films on this list were just a really good time, and I want to highlight them as well, and not only headier fare. I’ll mostly avoid spoilers, but in some cases, that won’t be possible, so tread lightly.

Night of the Comet (1984)

As we’re still in the holiday season, this seems a good place to start. I don’t know how I hadn’t gotten around to watching this before – it seems like something I would have seen as a kid but somehow missed. Thom Eberhadt’s post-apocalyptic/zombie-hellscape/sci-fi-comedy/Christmas-timed romp is just a hoot and a half. Two teen sisters are some of the very few survivors on earth (or at least LA) after a close call with a comet vaporizes most of the population and transforms the rest into bloodthirsty zombies. As you are here reading a ‘horror’ blog, don’t go in expecting much from the ‘zombies’ – they get about 5 minutes of screen time, but this modestly budgeted film is greatly entertaining and not lacking in horror. A tonal smorgasbord, the film features playful scenes of the two teenagers enjoying the run of the city to do whatever they like, haunting imagery of Los Angeles as a ghost town that is at once beautiful and eerie, surprising moments of depth and weight (such as when, pre-comet, Kelli Maroney’s stepmother full out punches her across the room in a shocking moment of domestic violence – no one mourns her being reduced to a pile of dust), and some narrative twists and turns that really got me. The film goes to some disarmingly dark places, but never loses its sense of fun along the way. And it’s set at Christmas, so it’s still seasonally appropriate.

Barbarian (2022)

Zach Cregger’s breakout film is on many end-of-the-year lists right now for good reason. If you don’t take too much time to think about some details, moment to moment, it’s possibly the best time I’ve had watching a horror movie in a good while. I can’t remember the last time I was actually compelled to yell at the screen, “Don’t go down there you idiot – what are you doing?!?” And at the same time, rooted in very real dangers and concerns that have been highlighted in the post #MeToo era, it lands a punch of relevance and resonance. When Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives at a double booked AirBnB and meets the other tenant, Keith (Bill Skarsgård), she is understandably extremely cautious, as are we. Even after the movie has taken some hard left turns and gone to totally unexpected places, it’s hard not to feel that Keith, such a seemingly nice guy, is actually a dangerous sleazebag. But as time goes on, that caution gets exhausted and then it’s shouting at the screen time. And that’s only the first act. When Justin Long appears at the top of the second, it is such a hard but refreshingly sunny and musical pivot, and what his character represents is an interesting inclusion to the film’s thematics in terms of the dangers of predatory men and their inability/refusal to take responsibility for their actions. But beyond those weighty concerns, this is just a blast – also, how weird is it that I watched it on Disney+? (Though I’m still waiting for the new Hellraiser, Disney…)

Puppet Master (1989)

Here’s another case of “how have I never seen this before?” Of course, Charles Band and David Schmoeller’s direct-to-video cult classic has always been on my radar, but I had never actually picked it up back in the video store days, so I was delighted when it came to Shudder this year. Though its modest budget is evident, the creative joy it takes in bringing to life its killer toys, such as Jester, Tunneler, and Leech Woman, is just infectious; its kill set pieces are creepy and weird; and its story is, if somewhat strained, still pretty effective, with a satisfying final act reversal. I really appreciated William Hickey’s turn as the puppet maker and “last true alchemist,” André Toulon, who discovered the secret of eternal life before being chased down by Nazis. The opening scene of him gently and with loving care, placing all his dolls in a chest, hiding it away, and committing suicide before the Reich can extract his secrets really lent an unexpected pathos to the story – you know, before dolls with drills for heads bore through anyone’s guts or sexy female puppets regurgitate leeches onto a prone victim. Endearingly lurid and lovingly nasty, this first entry in the nigh endless series (I think there are 15 so far), with its ever shifting mythology and chronology (sometimes the dolls are kind of good, and when they’re not, they’re Nazis), endures as a low budget gem.

Lux Æterna (2019)

Gaspar Noé’s short film (thankfully under an hour – it’s hard to imagine enduring much more) is not made to be enjoyed. But it is fascinating, captivating, intriguing, intense, sometimes hilarious, cruel, and as ambivalent as the day is long. Filmed in real time with multiple long tracking shots in split screens tracking different characters, this work of sensory overload follows Charlotte Gainsbourg, among others, through a chaotic film set where she is to be burned as a witch. Conflict abounds – between the cinematographer, the producer, and the director – between actresses and costume designers – between pushy guests who have their own projects to pitch and anyone cornered by them. It is a non-stop sea of noise and action and roiling emotion. Finally, as the scene is being filmed, a technical mishap sends the lighting into a colorful strobe effect which would be unsafe for any epileptic and is almost unendurable for the viewer. And it goes on. And on. For at least ten minutes, but it feels much longer. And what had been a fictional martyrdom seems realized in life. And the camera keeps rolling – long after the director has stormed off the set and the other actresses playing witches have escaped – the cinematographer keeps the lens trained on Gainsbourg and captures something transcendent. But does he? Here lies the ambivalence at the heart of the piece. Through the ending, the screen is filled with quotes from directors, including Noé himself, presenting the “auteur” as the sole conduit to true artistic purity, to the divine, demanding any suffering necessary to achieve that sublimity. This can be taken as the point of the piece – how the filmmaker cuts through the tumult and noise and, even if it means violently assaulting the actor, making a martyr of her, reveals truth. But it also feels deeply, deeply ironic – as if it is all to send up this very notion – and at the end of the day, the valorization of the auteur simply excuses pointless, artless cruelty and exploitation – both to the actors, his co-workers, and us, the audience. Whatever it was, it has stayed with me, and I’m very glad to have sat through it, though I must say, it’s not for everyone.

Prey (2022)

Another, “what a blast!” movie, Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator prequel manages to be both excitingly fresh and so true to the original that it could be accused of being an empty retread if it weren’t such a deeply felt and rollicking good time. Amanda Midthunder just kills it as a young, early 18th century Comanche woman determined to hunt, though the tribe has other expectations for her. To prove herself, against orders, she goes out to track down the biggest predator she can and finds herself squaring away with an alien presence seemingly here on earth to do the same. Along the way, there are thrilling action sequences, comedy bits that land, and brutal, tense alien violence – which is of course, overshadowed by the looming specter of European colonialism which will do more damage to her people than this single alien invader ever could. I’d long felt that Arnold in the first movie was basically a male slasher “final girl,” and here that gender flip comes full circle, the degree to which she is discounted as a possible threat (cause she’s a girl) being instrumental to her success. Also, it’s refreshing to see native people presented as just that, people – not “noble savages” or somehow “magically connected to the land,” but just intelligent, tool using people (with a different degree of technology, sure), as capable of pettiness and valor as any others. It’s up there with the original in my book, and I have hopes for the recently announced follow up which will take place in feudal Japan.

Pearl (2022)

So I must admit that I preferred Ti West’s X, released in the spring, to this prequel, delivered mere months later (both filmed back-to back in New Zealand during Covid lockdown), but a) I already wrote about X, b) this is still an interesting, bold piece, and taken together, they make a fascinating character portrait (though we now have to wait for the follow up, Maxxxine), and c) I think it’s more than worthy of discussion and promotion without any connection to the other movie. Filmed in a dreamy, technicolor, old Hollywood style ala Wizard of Oz or a Douglas Sirk melodrama, we once again follow Mia Goth, now as the young Pearl (who will grow up to be the murderous, elderly, physical-affection starved antagonist of X), a young girl trapped in a life of simplicity and familial obligation, dreaming of getting out and, (as Maxine will later repeat) becoming the star she knows she is. She chases after her aspirations with sociopathic fervor, but having seen the earlier film, we know it is all for naught – she’s never leaving the farm. The result is a strange mix of bloody psychodrama, dreamy hopefulness, and simple tragedy. Chekhov’s 3 sisters will see Moscow before Pearl escapes her dreary life of boredom and service, no matter how many people or geese she kills. At the same time, while Pearl is a largely sympathetic character, West pulls no punches in also presenting the inherent self-centered greed and coldness that drives her ambition (and sheds rivers of blood). We are pressed into an uncomfortable identification with her need for the thrill of independence, fulfillment, and joy, while fully cognizant of the callous sacrifices being made. What can we accept – in a protagonist? For ourselves? Where is our line between the demands we can slough off to chase our own stars and the responsibilities that burden us, pinning us down to the earth?

The Father (2020)

Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his own play, starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman, may strike most as ‘clearly-and-in-no-way-a-horror-movie-what-is-it-doing-on-this-list?,’ but I contend that this tale of an elderly man with dementia, losing his grip on reality, progressively less sure of his relationships with those around him as he loses his own certainty of self is absolutely a work of psychological horror – and it is tremendous. Clearly based on a play, characters largely come in and out of the same rooms – there are no special effects or psychedelic sequences, but it is a profoundly horrifying mind-trip. The woman he thinks is his daughter walks out and another woman enters who eventually explains that his daughter lives in Greece. But maybe this is his daughter. Does he actually have a daughter? Does he live with her, or in his own flat, or in a care facility? We watch through his eyes, losing any sense of solid ground as the film goes on. No one involved with the production sold it as a genre piece, let alone a horror film, but I think it’s one of the most effective works of horror I saw this year – beautiful, tender, and sad, and so deeply unsettling and scary. It isn’t the kind of mood I think most come to horror for, but I think it deserves a place among other psychological pieces like Jacob’s Ladder (1990) or Repulsion (1965).

Glorious (2022)

Rebekah McKendry’s Lovecraftian bottle movie concerns a man, Wes (Ryan Kwanten), trapped in a highway rest area Men’s room with a post-break-up hangover, talking to an ancient eldritch horror (voiced by J.K. Simmons) through a hole carved in the wall of the stall (get it? “glory”…). This being, Ghatanothoa, explains that Wes must make a kind of self-sacrifice to help Ghatanothoa escape before his father (who is essentially god) can use him to destroy humanity. It is pretty high concept stuff, but where it lands by the end is so emotionally grounded, getting to the core of who and what Wes is and what he and Ghatanothoa have in common, that it really justifies the world-building flights of fancy that get us there. I enjoyed most of the movie – it is frequently funny, often very weird, briefly quite gory, and consistently admirable in how big of a film it can be in a single, small location with almost only one physical actor and one voice (a few others, some significantly, get a few minutes of screen time, but mostly Kwanten and Simmons carry the flick – it almost feels like this was filmed during a global pandemic). But while I was enjoying the movie, I wasn’t in love with it until the final 10 minutes when the penny finally dropped and it kind of floored me. It’s a gorgeous, unique, small-scale piece and more people should know about it.

Orphan: First Kill (2022)

I don’t think any useful discussion of this can be had without revealing very significant spoilers of the first film. I’m going to say that if you haven’t seen Orphan (2009), please go watch it now before you read any further. DO NOT watch the 2022 film first, even though it’s a “prequel.” So go now – first Orphan (2009) and then Orphan: First Kill (2022). Thank me later.

Ok, I’m going to assume that anyone remaining has watched both films or will never watch both films. Wow – I must say I had my doubts when I heard that Isabelle Fuhrman, who had starred in the first film in 2007/8 when she was 10, now 24, was going to do a prequel, reprising the role of Esther at an even younger age, and that it was going to be done without computer trickery, but just with body doubles and in-camera effects (ala the hobbits in Lord of the Rings). But it really works! I mean it works by not working – hopefully everyone who saw this had already seen the original film and already knew that earlier film’s twist – that Esther is actually a grown-up with a form of dwarfism, masquerading as a little girl to infiltrate families via adoption, hit on the adoptive father, take what she wants, and kill anyone in her way. Here, we all know from the first frame that this ‘little girl’ is actually, as one character later incredulously says, “a grown-ass woman,” and having an adult woman clearly playing her (though we suspend our disbelief to accept that no other characters can see through her dastardly ruse) helps us watch and enjoy the act all the more clearly – though when she breaks that character, driving a stolen car, listening to ‘Maniac,’ wearing sun glasses, and smoking a cigarette, it’s pretty frickin’ fantastic. The first film turned on such a big reveal and I wondered what they could do here without getting repetitive, but the eventual twist is a doozy. I can’t make any claim of thematic depth or significance, but this movie is just a thrilling, ridiculous, delightful ride.

Rope (1948)

This list has not been any kind of countdown, but I have saved the best for last. For years, I’d been meaning to check out this Hitchcock thriller, most famous for its technical trick of appearing to all be done in one take, but I had no idea just how great of a movie it is, how exciting, how funny, and how chilling. The one take gimmick (which is a bit obvious – every time there’s a “hidden” cut, the camera passes behind someone’s back for a moment) is impressive, and is instrumental in the success of the piece, but it is just one part of a significant whole. Mainly it helps establish the breathless urgency of events playing out in a kind of theatrical “real time” (significantly, this real time is not realistic – events take as long or as short as the drama requires, but the exigency is palpable). The film begins with a couple, Brandon and Phillip (striking how in the late 40s, a clearly gay couple could be shown so openly – if unremarked on – there were probably some viewers who assumed they were just “roommates” – but really, how?), murdering a friend, David, and hiding him in a chest in their living room before hosting a dinner party comprising David’s closest friends and family – all in order to experience pulling off ‘the perfect murder,’ achieving a kind of aesthetic perfection. They even invite an old professor (played by Jimmy Stewart) who used to lecture about a Nietzschean ascendancy which would entitle the ‘superior’ man to kill as he sees fit, free from the morals of the herd.

Brandon, the dominant of the two (their relationship dynamics are wild), gleefully plays with how close he can get to the fire without being burned, without the crime being revealed – serving dinner on the fateful chest or tying up some old books to give David’s father using the rope with which he had strangled his son a half hour earlier, while Phillip just gets drunker and more terrified as the evening progresses, and hence, more erratic and incautious. Hitchcock is absolutely impish in his game of tension, with what enters the frame and what doesn’t, with how close they get to being caught. Finally, there is the element that I think really qualifies this as horror. Watching Jimmy Stewart’s Rupert slowly piece together the clues staring at him in plain sight and the dawning realization of the role he has played in inspiring this crime is a horror beat. Additionally, the very concept of murder for aesthetic entertainment – of characters delighting in venturing into a post-moral space – is more than a little chilling – bringing us to a more horrific (though still essentially thrilling) territory than a crime of passion or greed. I can’t overstate how great this was and, even if only ‘horror-adjacent,’ I think it’s more than worth the time of any fan of the genre.

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And so, there we have it. Ten movies that were new to me that I hadn’t previously written about. That was 2022, and at least in terms of movies, it was pretty great. Let’s see what ’23 holds… Thanks for joining me here – I hope your new year treats you well and we can all keep the horror on the screen and page and otherwise, at bay.

Seductive Sounds of Terror – Ten Favorite Horror Scores

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So, some time back I put out a list of ten “songs of the summer,” all original songs written/recorded for 80s horror flicks that just said, “summer” to me. At the time, I excluded horror scores from the list as that really could be its own post. And now it is. This post here.

What is it about them that’s so addictive? I mean, film music can be perfectly enjoyable from any genre if the composition is strong, but there is something about music orchestrated to both pull you in and set you on edge that is really compelling for me. One of my jobs (proofreading translations) is very detail oriented and I very often put on music from some horror film while I’m doing it. I need energy and focus, but I can’t be distracted by words, and the drive, playfulness, and bite of a good horror score always hits the spot, keeping me moving, but also alert. Plus, they just put me in a good mood.

So, for this list, again, I’m setting myself some rules (which I might also let myself break). I’ll only include full scores. There are so many really rocking themes that stand on their own, but for which I’m not really familiar with the whole score they’re from (or sometimes, a whole score wasn’t even written – but there is one great theme), so while I love, for example, the main themes to Gremlins, Rosemary’s Baby, The Psychic, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Chopping Mall, or just about every John Carpenter movie, I’m not going to put them on this list.

Also, I’m going to try to stick to a one per composer/director rule, but that will be hard, particularly in terms of the Italians and, again, John Carpenter, so we’ll see how well I do with this one.  Anyway, here, in no particular order, are my ten favorite horror scores. Enjoy!

Candyman (1992) – Philip Glass

CANDYMAN (1992) [FULL VINYL]

We may be starting with my favorite. Philip Glass is a modern, minimalist composer and his score is, at once, quite spare – a few instruments, mostly the organ, and a chorus, building repetitions of simple themes, while being at the same time grand, romantic, mournful, gothic, and full of dread. The pulsing repetitions become claustrophobic, though the themes being repeated can be quite pretty, and there is an edge of something unresolved stretched across the composition. There are no stingers to accompany jump scares, but it is unsettling, uncanny, and beautiful – the perfect accompaniment to the film’s central themes. I pretty much think this film is a masterpiece, but I don’t know how true that would be without this tremendous music to raise its effect. Also – I’ve been using the music box theme that kicks it off as my ringtone for at least the last fifteen years.

Daughters of Darkness (1971) – François De Roubaix

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (1971) [FULL VINYL]

Sensual and atmospheric, the music here fluctuates between an erotic early seventies groove, a languid, classy waltz that implies something much older and aristocratic, and this hypnotic spookiness that seduces, but still has a bit of an edge. There are themes that repeat, but often with different instrumentation, or carrying a slightly different vibe. It is all playful, varied, and also pretty steamy. And it just works so well in the film, helping to build the enveloping atmosphere of the whole piece.

Dracula (1992) – Wojciech Kilar

Dracula (1992) Soundtrack (Full vinyl Rip)

This was the first film score that I ever bought, so enamored was I with Coppola’s rich, romantic, colorfully extravagant interpretation of Stoker’s story. The music is grandiose and monumental to the point of being intimidating. Kilar’s score is a building storm of orchestral power, driving and intense. Subtle it is not, but neither is the film, and I think they make a perfect pairing. Also, I haven’t found confirmation of this anywhere, but I feel like it includes a really interesting musical reference to the 1922 score to Nosferatu, the granddaddy of vampire cinema. Listen to the first track, “Thema I” or the penultimate track, “Nosferatu saugt Ellen und stibt im Morgengrauen” and see if it doesn’t feel familiar.

Phantasm (1979) – Fred Myrow & Malcolm Seagrave

"Phantasm" Full Vinyl Soundtrack by Fred Myrow & Malcolm Seagrave

Phantasm has one of the most iconic main themes in the genre, living in my head in close proximity to Carpenter’s theme for Halloween, both eking maximum effect out of a really small handful of notes. But that is only the beginning. The rest of the work, featuring a wide and eclectic array of percussion instruments and gloriously atmospheric synthesized soundscapes, is just as creepily inviting and sublimely weird. It ranges from alien discordance to a disco funk, from gothic spookiness to avant-garde pandemonium, all matching the film’s home-spun idiosyncrasies beat for beat.

City of the Living Dead (1980) – Fabio Frizzi / The House by the Cemetery (1981) – Walter Rizzati

Ok, so I’m breaking a rule here as this Sophie’s choice between these scores to two entries in Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy is just too much for me. (The Beyond is good too, but these two just blow me away.) They are for two films from the same director, but at least the composers are different, so that’s something. But they are equally compelling, and well suited to their respective flicks.

Going chronologically, City of the Living Dead is sometimes mysterious, sometimes rocking, and always eerie. Frizzi is really one of the best in the game, so it was hard to choose just one piece of his, but in the end, I just can’t get over the gothic, incessant atmosphere of this one. It’s a great space to dwell in, with strange, distorted sounds that still retain musicality, with a kind of implacable lurching towards the grave, and with a guitar solo on one track that seems exactly like something David Gilmore of Pink Floyd would have produced.

The House by the Cemetery // Walter Rizzati -- Death Waltz Records [Full Vinyl Rip]

The score for The House by the Cemetery works in a similar mode, but stakes out its own ground. There is a creeping dread here mixed with a kind of enraptured nostalgia. The second track, “I Remember,” I could listen to all day. There is an emotional tension that pairs so well with this gory, gorgeous film of nightmare logic and the wicked Doctor Freudstein.

The Burning (1981) – Rick Wakeman

The Burning OST (1981) [Vinyl]

This one, very simply, just rocks! Rick Wakeman, a keyboardist for the band Yes (i.a., Owner of a lonely heart) really soars here. It swings between a lyrical beauty appropriate to the natural setting of this summer camp set slasher and a stomping synthesized rock sound, effectively intense in underscoring the film’s mayhem and murder. And it all just sounds so cool and weird. There are sounds here that only a synth could make, which are not trying to imitate anything that came before, which are odd, but really work in the film. And aside from the film, as a standalone album, it is all just so much fun.

Suspiria (1977) – Goblin

Dario Argento's ‘Suspiria’ – Full Vinyl Soundtrack by Goblin

This is another impossible choice. I could have just as easily listed the score for Profundo Rosso or Tenebrae, but I am only allowing myself one Goblin scored Argento flick. And the film showcases the music so well. The opening sequence is a prime example: Suzy arriving at the airport, with the music swelling each time the doors open, letting in both the sound and the storm, the main theme implying the violent threat of this black forest fairy tale setting she is so vulnerably walking into. She goes through the automatic doors into a raging storm, at once entering a world of magic and threat and cool, weird melodies accompanied by creepy voices singing “la, la, la, la”. Goblin’s music is sometimes delicate, sometimes darkly enveloping in its creepy awesomness, and sometimes discordantly disquieting (while ironically being pretty loud), really setting nerves on edge. But the overall effect is glorious, absolutely integral to the film, and a perfect complement to Argento’s technicolor visual assault, all resulting in an effective, delirious, addictive sensory overload of a movie.

The Fog (1980) – John Carpenter

The Fog Soundtrack (Blake's Gold Edition) [Full Vinyl Rip] Part 1

“11:55, almost midnight. Enough time for one more story. One more story before 12:00, just to keep us warm.” This is another nail biter of a choice. I doubt anyone else has crafted so many recognizable, iconic themes, particularly while working with a pretty contained palette, but I think this is my favorite. Endlessly atmospheric and catchy, he laid down the perfect foggy sound for his old fashioned fireside ghost story of deadly revenge rolling in from the sea. There is a fragile sense of loss to the compositions, a palpable dread, and the hook of fascination that pulls you in even as you tremble – a delicious, doom-laden auditory treat.

The Wicker Man (1973) – Paul Giovanni and Magnet

the wicker man ost-corn rigs

Again, I feel like I’m breaking my own rules as I hadn’t intended to include anything featuring songs with lyrics, but I just can’t leave this out, and with its folksy, historical charm, it is also a nice counterpoint to some of the other music on this list. The scoring, all based in traditional Scottish, English, and Irish music, really sets the stage for our visit to Summerisle, and perfectly gives voice to its inhabitants as they undergo their fiery celebration. And the songs that are sung, such as “Gently Johnny,” “The Maypole Song,” or “Willow’s Song” are such a significant aspect of how we see the life of the village – boisterous and lusty and joyfully pagan. As long as you’re not an overly religious and sexually repressed police sergeant investigating a missing child, it is unbelievably inviting. The first time I saw The Wicker Man, I hadn’t known what to expect and I was puzzled to discover that it’s kind of a musical, but now the sung portions are something I look forward to every time.

A note: I couldn’t find a clip with the whole soundtrack on Youtube, so the video above is just the first song. However, you can follow this link to a playlist that includes the full soundtrack.

Day of the Dead (1985) – John Harrison

Day of the Dead OST // Waxwork Records [FULL VINYL RIP]

This was another tossup – Harrison’s work for Creepshow is great, but the rising dread set to a sometimes calypso beat that he worked up for Romero’s third zombie outing just stands the test of time. We have the sustained tension fitting for this claustrophobic bunker setting, we have militaristic marches following the aggression of the army guys, and we have an essential weirdness well suited to the unknowable nature of the living dead. And somehow, even through the musical trepidation, there are odd notes of lightness and play. Some compositions really maintain an interesting tension and/or a balance between a bass-y low-end relentlessness and airy notes dancing about on top of it all. And it is just so effective in the film itself, which is of course the point.

Well that’s that. I hope this music serves you (whoever you may be) as well as it does me. May your hours in front of the computer be groovier – and more ominous.