The Birds
In the 1960s, horror sat right down next to the audience.
It stopped being about the thing under the bed and became about the person next to you.
It now lurked everywhere, hiding in plain sight.
It looked like our friends and neighbors.
Its thoughts grew more disturbed and its forces became harder to reckon with.
She never checks out.
His movies challenged the act of seeing, of understanding what images and sounds tell us.
It makes us God while placing us in the safe womb of a dark theater for 90 minutes.
Guilt is the subject here, and the mortification of flesh becomes a release for feelings of culpability.
Characters scratch at itches that will never be satisfied, leaving the infected sights bloody and infected.
Along with her big city amorality, she also evidently brings a freak natural perversion.
Birds begin attacking and killing the people of Bodega Bay left and right.
Instead, they get his no ne’er-do-well friend Hachi (Kei Sato).
Onibabais a text book case of less is more.
Its opening half hour is devoted to placing its characters in a sea of wild reeds surrounding their homes.
Theres a serenity, however fleeting and dishonest, to the fields that enclose them.
The calm is thus easily and forcefully broken by the slightest intrusion, making simple things truly terrifying.
Its quiet that frightens and compels, not noise.
When her sister leaves her alone for a few days, Carol’s mental health deteriorates with alarming speed.
These films were Rorschach tests.
Witchfinder General (1968)
Vincent Price was horrors gentleman emcee.
His honeyed timbre was unmistakable and his elegance impossible to hide no matter how thick and imposing the make-up.
He could make a story about rats trapped in a wall sound like the sweetest thing on earth.
So its most impressive that director Michael Reeves found a genuinely sinister performance under that elegance and easy grace.
A god-granted authority keeps him upright as he gleefully plunges into his despicable task.
Director Narciso Ibanez Serrador gets every detail of the creaky old school exactly right.
This is the definitive high school horror film and it’s ripe for rediscovery.
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What are your favorite ’60s fright films?
What do you happily surrender your nightmares to?
Is black and white scarier than color?
