The month’s half-over, but there’s plenty of time left for October horror. (Or so I reassure myself, as I watch my horror friends’ lists spiral into the dozens, as they report back from 24-hour scare-a-thons, and generally act like a bunch of goddamn lunatics with weird time-management skills and no regular jobs!
Reflecting, in 1967, on the experience of seeing old movies on TV, notorious curmudgeon/amazing writer Pauline Kael wrote, “Horror and fantasy films … are surprisingly effective, perhaps because they are so primitive in their appeal that the qualities of the imagery matter less than the basic suggestions.
Ok, it is less impressive and thematically appropriate than “31 Horror Movies For October,” but that’s how it ended up.
What can I say? Life gets in the way, your stolen internet goes dark, you leave town for a few days, no one wants to watch horror movies at a wedding – many things can happen.
The Dissolve commentariat has been posting write-ups of horror movies all month (which are amazing and which you should read). Here’s mine, on Val Lewton.
SCAREFEST: Val Lewton Marathon — Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942); The Curse of the Cat People (Gunther von Fritsch, Robert Wise, 1944); The 7th Victim (Mark Robson, 1943)
The original Cat People – Val Lewton’s 1942 production debut for RKO, directed by Jacques Tourneur – is justifiably famous for the absence of, well, cat people.