There are a lot of great alien invasion movies, but few match the paranoia of Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Based on Jack Finney's novel, this adaptation was released in 1978, but I didn't see it until 1980 or 1981, when I caught it on a cable channel at a friend's house. And it was one of the most terrifying things I'd ever seen. It wasn't just the idea that an alien might replace you with an exact duplicate, but that Leonard Nimoy could play a psychiatrist who encourages to get in touch with their feeling--someone completely against the character of Spock on Star Trek. The movie's San Francisco setting and Kaufman's odd camera angles added to the movie's unease. The actors include Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright, and Jeff Goldblum, and all are outstanding. There are two other film versions I can recommend: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, d. Don Siegel) and Body Snatchers (1993, d. Abel Ferrera). (I know a 2007 adaptation exists, but I have no desire to see it.) However, the 1978 version was the one I saw first, and for me remains the most effective. Which version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers do you prefer? Have you read the novel, and if so, what did you think? Do you have a favorite alien invasion movie? Let me know in the comments.
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If you've followed this series up to this point, you probably understand that I tend to like a sense of the otherworldly in my horror. I love the fantasy elements, which means I tend to gravitate to horror infused with surrealism. This can include anything in David Lynch's filmography, works we normally wouldn't consider horror, such as Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, and one of my favorite novels, Philip K. Dick's Ubik. Written in 1969 and set in a futuristic 1992, Ubik is a science fiction novel; you look at its trappings--precognitives advising corporate CEOs on the effects of mergers, spaceships flying to the moon as regularly as intercontinental flights, the dead living a half-life in "cold sleep", seeing both the phenomenal world and the world beyond--yet it functions equally as a metaphysical horror story. Questions about life and death arise regularly. Reality and unreality crash together, fracturing both. Dick arguably has written better novels, but in terms of what horror fans might enjoy, Ubik is the one I would recommend. It's strange, surreal, and horrifying, with existential dread building as reality breaks down. Fans of A Nightmare on Elm Street will find a lot to love in its dream logic. Do you have a favorite surreal horror story or horror novel? Do you have a favorite Philip K. Dick novel? Let me know in the comments.
I can't actually call Creepshow the greatest horror movie anthology ever made, but it was my first, and it has become one of the most enduring. Directed by George A. Romero, Creepshow comprises five stories written by Stephen King, all of varying degrees of success. The best of these is "The Crate", about a wooden crate (naturally) found in the basement of a university campus, and which is home to a carnivorous being. "Something to Tide You Over" is a tale of love, revenge, vengeance, and the undead. The dead rise from the grave in "Father's Day", a story that doesn't quite work but of which I am particularly fond. In addition, a brief bridging story features a very young Joe Hill portraying a tormented child. There are other, better anthology movies. Trilogy of Terror is superior, especially in its adaptation of Richard Matheson's "The Prey". (It helps that Matheson wrote Trilogy of Terror's screenplay.) Trick 'r Treat's stories are more consistent. Southbound is more conceptually daring. However, none of these get the camp humor inherent in Creepshow, which took as its inspiration from the EC Comics The Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt. What is your favorite episode from Creepshow? What is your favorite horror movie anthology? Let me know in the comments.
When I was younger, I didn't consider myself a horror fan. But I did love science fiction, in no small part because the DC and Marvel stories I loved regularly featured science fiction elements. Then, sometime after I turned six, I began watching Star Trek at my mother's recommendation (in part, I'm sure, to move me out of comics), and its five-year mission to explore strange new worlds and going boldly where no one has gone before enthralled me. Horror didn't interest me. Keep in mind that this was the 1970s. Science fiction was everywhere. This was the era of Star Wars (without this "A New Hope" nonsense). This was the era of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And it was the era of Alien. On its release in 1979, fans and critics hailed it as one of the scariest movies ever made. Because of its reputation, I actually didn't see Alien until I was in my teens; even Crack'd magazine's parody, which served as a guide for when audiences needed to shield their eyes (and, in the case of the chestburster sequence, their ears as well). Still, its science fiction elements piqued my curiosity. As I did with The Shining, I picked up a copy of Alan Dean Foster's novelization, which I found in one our local grocery store spinner racks, in order to dampen the potential horror elements. Like The Shining, I was wrong about it doing so, and found it only whetted my appetite to actually see the movie itself.
At the time of Alien's release, I didn't know anything about H. P. Lovecraft. I had never heard the term "cosmic horror". But the concepts the movie proffered stayed with me. As a kid weaned on the strangely compelling (if shoddily presented) television series In Search Of..., I couldn't help but find the ancient alien species far older than humanity compelling, nor could I not be existentially terrified by their use of humans as anything more than an element in their reproductive system. Moreover, H. R. Giger's art and creature designs filled me with transcendent awe, even on a crappy VHS copy on a crappier television. I tend to not like lumping horror in with science fiction. They aren't the same thing, and often I find their philosophical underpinnings mutually exclusive. And yet, when they're mixed well, the results can be unforgettable, and that's precisely the case with Alien. More than 40 years later, it remains one of the greatest science fiction horror movies ever made. What was your first science fiction horror movie? Do you have a favorite? Let me know in the comments. I'm surprised that I haven't talked about Edgar Allan Poe. I tend to forget Poe because his presence is ingrained in horror fiction. His shadow touches on almost every aspect of the genre, from tales of murder and madness ("The Black Cat") to the Gothic ("The Fall of the House of Usher"), from stories of revenge ("The Cask of Amontillado") to longing for the dead ("Ligeia"). You can read his work and see the seeds that will take root throughout the rest of horror fiction. The last third of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket veers into cosmic horror. It's hard for me to pick my own favorite, but in keeping with this series, I will spotlight "The Tell-Tale Heart". I encountered it when I was twelve, and its macabre imagery refused to let me go, even as we discussed it in my seventh-grade English class. It's a fever dream of insanity. Do you have a favorite Edgar Allan Poe story? Let me know in the comments.
David Lynch is not a horror director. He's never made a horror movie. While his movies deconstruct the very idea of narrative, they seldom show interest in different types of narrative conventions, and specifically horror conventions. None of his movies can specifically be considered vampire movies. None are haunted house movies. None are werewolf movies. That doesn't mean his work holds little interest to the horror fan or horror writer. Unease and dread run through much of his filmography, and one can make the case that the contents of his movies terrify far more effectively than most horror fare. This is in part because the masters that populate his universe are more personal than the standard pantheon of either the Universal Classic Monsters or those from Hammer Studios. Both the Experiment and the Woodsmen from Twin Peaks: The Return come from the fathomless depths of Lynch's id; both are so jarring they fill one's blood with Freon. Most horror guides point to Eraserhead as Lynch's go-to horror effort, but the first Lynch I ever encountered was Blue Velvet. It's more of a Neo-noir or psychological or erotic thriller, but it functions equally well as a horror movie. Frank Booth is one of the most psychotic characters you're likely to find outside of Patrick Bateman, while the underworld Jeffrey Beaumont enters is as surreal and uncanny as anything you'd find in the works of Clive Barker. What is your favorite David Lynch movie? How about your favorite movie that is not marketed as horror but functions as one? Let me know in the comments.
Let's talk Wes Craven. I happen to like Craven's work. He approached horror from a vastly different standpoint than most studio-driven fare. He was akin to a filmmaker like George A. Romero or David Cronenberg, who used horror as a mode of commentary. It often makes his output frustrating. Incredible ideas bubble beneath his movies, yet in many cases his movies are marred either by overacting or studio interference. This is true of even an acknowledged classic like The Serpent and the Rainbow and the underrated Shocker. With all of that out of the way, I love A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's a slasher a movie, but when I saw it at sixteen, I was blown away by the fact that a supernatural element drives it. And the concept is remarkable. There's very little more terrifying than having a dream you cannot escape; when a psychopath threatens to kill you in your own dreams, it becomes even more so. The dream sequences themselves possess a surreal quality, adding an otherworldly feel that often was lacking in horror. Nearly forty years later, A Nightmare on Elm Street has lost none of its ability to scare. It remains one of my all-time favorites.
Do you have a favorite Wes Craven movie? Let me know in the comments. I've said before that, when I was younger, I didn't consider myself a horror fan. Part of it had to do with the Satanic Panic, which seemed to crop up even among more level-headed sorts. But the key reason was that, in the 1980s, the word "horror" was synonymous with "slasher." You couldn't argue this point with anybody. Distinctions like folk horror, horror comedies, even (ugh) elevated horror simply didn't exist. It was all Freddie, Jason, and Michael, all the time. Which brings us to John Carpenter's classic Halloween. When I was a senior in high school, our English teacher brought her VCR to class so we could watch a presentation of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth (which I also should feature in this series). She got a television from the AV room and we hooked up the VCR and, seeing there was a tape inside, pressed Play. The first beats of Carpenter's iconic score came through the television's speaker, and the students in the classroom begged our teacher to let them at least watch the first kill. To my complete surprise, she acquiesced, and said, "As movies like this go, this is the best." After watching it, I had an electric buzz running through my body, as if I'd touched a live wire, and after school went to our closest video rental store to pick up a copy. Like Hitchcock's Psycho, Halloween is a movie that changed the face of horror. It is certainly the greatest slasher movie ever made, and by far one of the most (if not the most) influential. Without Halloween, you have no Friday the 13th. You have no The Burning. Or Pieces. Or Night School. Or Slumber Party Massacre. Or literally a hundred others. There are sequels. There are remakes. There are at least two soft reboots. All have their moments, even though some elaborate on an unnecessary mythology. The current series is enjoyable. I like both Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills, and I'm hoping for good things with Halloween Ends. Still, none of these really stand with Carpenter's original. It remains one of the best of all time. What is your favorite slasher movie? If you love the franchise, what is your favorite Halloween movie? Let me know in the comments.
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson is one of my favorite novels. It's a post-apocalyptic story about the last human on an Earth overrun by vampires. Even today, it remains a relevant, striking story, with spare prose underlying the tale's sense of urgency. And the ending still packs a punch--not surprising, given Matheson's work on several of the best Twilight Zone episodes. It's a novel I recommend unreservedly. There are three movie versions: The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007). While each has its merits, none capture the novel's paranoia and anxiety. Do you have a favorite post-apocalyptic novel? How about a favorite Matheson novel? Let me know in the comments.
Yesterday I wrote a few words about Dario Argento, referred to in some circles as the Italian Alfred Hitchcock. This allows me to segue to Hitch and his seminal 1960 movie Psycho. It's impossible to overstate the movie's influence. It's a movie that changed everything; not only did it set the stage for what we consider to be the modern thriller, it also laid the groundwork for the slasher movie. You can see seeds of it in Bob Clark's Black Christmas, and full flowering with movies like John Carpenter's Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Burning, and more than a hundred others. It's based on a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch. While there are a few minor differences, the novel is as much required reading for horror fans as the movie is required viewing. What is your favorite proto-slasher movie? What is your favorite Alfred Hitchcock movie? Let me know in the comments.
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Derek Austin Johnson has lived most of his life in the Lone Star State. His work has appeared in The Horror Zine, Rayguns Over Texas!, Horror U.S.A.: Texas, Campfire Macabre, The Dread Machine, and Generation X-ed.
He lives in Central Texas. Archives
August 2023
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