Inconsistent output is one of the first (and possibly among the biggest) mistakes you can make when you begin to release digital output. I don’t remember where I heard that, but it’s stuck with me. My plan remains to release a new newsletter every Tuesday. And yet, as you may have noticed, today is Wednesday.
Reader, I messed up. I went into the latest post aware that I had to fit in my writing around a different and bigger work project I signed on to do over the weekend. What I was not prepared for was a prolonged bout of insomnia that’s cut my sleep in half and essentially whisked my brain into a thin liquid. It’s been an intermittent issue for the past few weeks, but up until the last week or so it was relatively easy to return to resting after my slumber was hijacked by...I don’t know, exactly. Probably something related to TMJ disorder, possibly also related to anxiety. I am not a doctor, and unless I receive an honorary PhD for film newsletters, I suspect I never will be.
You didn’t need to know most of that. What you should know is I had a choice between digging my heels in and thrashing at my latest full article until I had some semblance of a post to share, which would obviously still arrive late, or give myself the grace of a short post this week so that I can get my rest right and do something passable next week. In lieu of a full article, I am still sharing my latest Halloween four-pack viewing experience. This one is built around an under-discussed decade for the horror genre, one that helped to both usher in the grimier, grosser films of the 1970s and set certain expectations regarding how filmmakers would inflict terror, as well as what they can potentially do with small budgets.
Nintendo Sixties-Four
Four horror films from the 1960s
While the sharpest and most mischievous filmmakers could toe or even traipse over the lines drawn by the Hays Code throughout its existence, its power had waned significantly by the 1960s, an era it would not survive. While the horror genre was able to make big strides in terms of gore, fatalism, and viscerality in the vaunted 1970s, the Sixties played a vital if under-discussed role in pushing toward this period.
In other words, this is a subtly influential decade, but also a fruitful one, which means there are significantly more than four films worth watching. This is hardly the sum of the period, and it may not reflect what is “best,” but it’s a fun way to feel both the pull of the past and the tug of the future in one night of film watching. If you like these, take time to look at what else came from the decade, and be sure to look beyond our shores—foreign horror classics like Eyes Without a Face and Kwaidan were also released in this ten year span.
BONUS: Psycho
Nailing a “vibe” through a film lineup is like practicing spirit photography: You’re going through a lot of work to capture something that wasn’t there, and furthermore wasn’t supposed to be there. Psycho, beyond being a great work on its own, blows up ideas of both the horror film, the thriller, and the “Hitchcock film.” It’s arguably one of the most important pieces of American cinema, but it is too forward-thinking to fit the sense of progression I wanted for this four-pack. So consider this appearance on the list a token of respect, and also a chance for me to tease an October newsletter that will discuss it and its electric contemporary, Peeping Tom, arguably its equal in audacity but the only one of the two to cause professional suffering for its creator.
The Haunting
The Haunting is indebted to the Val Lewton-produced films of the 1940s, partly because it shares these films’ understanding that atmosphere and suggestion could cast a potent spell over audiences, and partly because The Haunting is directed by Robert Wise, who made The Body Snatcher for Lewton in 1945 and also took over directorial duties for The Curse of the Cat People. While it has one foot firmly in the past, it dual-wields classic dread and a kind of nervy, psychological terror as it both conventionally torments visitors to a “cursed” house and picks at the mental wellness of poor Eleanor like a disturbed child picks at the pieces of a fly. The presence of free-spirited psychic Theodora, and her simmering, ambiguous-by-necessity dynamic with Eleanor, also make this film an early representation of LGBTQ characters in the genre.
Carnival of Souls
How did the only film from stock footage director Herk Harvey, independently produced in Kansas and Utah with no recognizable stars and a meager budget, become an influential cult classic? For one, it inspired another independent feature, Night of the Living Dead, arguably (meaning I sometimes argue this) the most important horror movie ever made. Another reason is that it’s a singular film, both dreamlike and grounded, that feels like something beamed in from a different dimension. Even as it wears its stylistic influences proudly, it feels apart from anything you can find from its day, or from any other. Expect the first of an endless series of newsletters about this film soon.
Night of the Living Dead
While Night of the Living Dead had its influences (see above), it would go on to outline so much of what would come from horror. Within a few minutes, our faces are pressed against the fence separating us from the terror onscreen; it’s hard to think of another film before it that could immerse you so deeply in its characters’ plight, and few do so well to make it clear that audiences, particularly in a genre like horror, are not entitled to happy endings. There are films before it that have a contemporary or timeless feel, but it’s hard to imagine a world without Night of the Living Dead and its small budget, relentless tension, and throat-gripping urgency influencing later horror filmmaking.
Targets
If The Haunting is partly shaped by its director’s interest in both drawing from the past and seeking the future, Targets essentially lets this conflict define its story. We follow two strands of the plot: In the first, Boris Karloff (another Val Lewton alum, incidentally, though on the other side of the camera from Robert Wise) plays Byron Orlok, a legendary horror film actor looking forward to retirement. In the other, we watch Bobby Thompson unravel into an icy killer, one who uses his background in shooting to go on a murder spree with a sniper rifle. The two stories eventually merge to essentially pit a wayward figure from the past against a future that is crueler, colder, and hollower than Orlok (and the audience) is prepared to witness.