ok lets all shit our pants to something old: pre-2006 horror film thread

I can't think of any such list but I often find public domain collections to be slim pickings. I remember there was a YouTube channel devoted to public domain horror but I don't recall the name. They're not always as complete or in the good condition of the version you have pay for. Or its something you've probably seen (Nosferatu, Carnival Of Souls, Night Of The Living Dead).
I think some of the Corman films are public domain, not sure.

I had a collection with the Corman films A Bucket Of Blood and The Terror on them, which I think was public domain. A Bucket Of Blood is pretty good, an old horror comedy with funny beatniks. The Terror has Karloff and Jack Nicholson is much like the Vincent Price films but not as good.

Part of the issue I'm running into is with movies that have received next-to-no DVD release outside of some weird slapped-together multi-film set whose title doesn't make it immediately apparent what it contains. Which can be cool when you happen upon something you had no idea was available (or that's OOP and expensive on its own).

THEM

The start is fairly ominous and I like the sounds of the ants but I found this surprisingly dull.

Anyone seen Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis or Tokyo: The Last War? Giger did designs for one of them. The Vega/M Bison design comes from the series.

SPIDER BABY

Was never anxious to see this but it's really unique. A horror film of that era (1964), with that style of slightly modernised classic horror, humour, sweetness and sexiness makes it quite unlike anything else I've seen, even if it does feel incredibly short. Jill Banner as Virginia is adorable and probably the best thing about the film but Lon Chaney Jr as the loving father figure is also pretty good.

Among many other things on the Arrow disc release is a short feature about composer Ronald Stein, focusing on how different how scores were and how underappreciated he is. There are a few compilations of his music but very little in the way of full soundtrack releases. Maybe there weren't many music pieces per film?

how different how
how different his

An overview of the fantasy and horror films of Juraj Herz.
http://www.fright.com/edge/JurajHerz.htm
I'm a big fan of Beauty And The Beast and Morgiana, but it looks like it's mostly downhill from there. Would be nice if he could make more films in the spirit of his best work.

House Of Wax (1953) yay or nay? I haven't seen it.

THE UNDEAD (1957)

Perhaps the first Roger Corman gothic horror? It's black and white, pretty foggy.

A prostitute is hypnotized and sent back centuries in time to a previous life as a witch. There's another two witches, including Allison Hayes (Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman) who can turn into animals and insects. Satan's there too.

If this was better written, acted and a bit better designed it could have been one of the best horror films of it's time. As it stands it's fairly enjoyable and daft. Allison Hayes looks amazing, the dance of dead women is kind of cool but the Ronald Stein soundtrack is probably the best thing about it (sadly it doesn't seem to be available in any form except on the film).

Guys I know I'm not the only one who watches horror films from more than a decade ago, why havent you been talking about what you've seen over the last several months?

I don't feel like typing about movies very much I guess? Horror Hotel was good, I enjoyed the killer babies & sensitive 70s husband Frederic Forrest in It Lives Again

I keep wanting to call it It's Still Alive -- but regardless that movie was enjoyable and I really liked the killer baby effects

Re-watched Scanners and the 70s Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake in the last couple of weeks. As I said in the "last x movies you saw" thread, Scanners was more thriller than horror - car chases, shootouts, bureaucrats arguing in offices. The exploding head was the only big horror moment. Invasion... remains scary as hell. I like three of the four versions of that story - even the '90s Abel Ferrara one has its moments (Meg Tilly's really good in it). The only one that sucks is the recent one with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.

The score to the 70s body snatchers by Denny Zeitlin is sooooo great. It's available as a digital album now. Jazz-doom-synth

I do watch old horror movies all the time (probably like ten of them in the past week?) but my prime ILX posting time doesn't really overlap much.

I rewatched Psycho for probably the first time since before Van Sant's version was released. Very well constructed, in a way that left me wishing I could see it with no foreknowledge. The identity of the titular psycho is teased beautifully a number of times before any psycho-ing even takes place. My only criticism would be the 4 1/2 hour end sequence of the psychologist explaining everything.

Followed that up with Psycho II, which is naturally a pale shadow but not bad taken on its own terms. I did benefit from a lack of foreknowledge with this one, only identifying the psycho about five minutes before the revelation. Given that this was released in '83, there's naturally some ott concession to the contemporaneous slasher boom but it's mostly pretty restrained.

And then I watched the first episode of Bates Motel which was good but also a little bonkers and campy and jarring in its updatedness (Norman shouldn't be texting) but I think I'll hang in since the short seasons alleviate the otherwise overwhelming prospect of jumping into a series that's already four seasons deep.

I Drink Your Blood was some real campy fun. Might pick up the Blu-Ray when it comes out later this month.
Caught Cronenberg's The Brood recently - not up there with his best, but still worthwhile imo; good mood, enjoyed the acting and creepy "villains".

Alongside the old movies, I've been watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Twilight Zone from the start (and plan to pick up some of the other anthologies from that time like Tales of Tomorrow and One Step Beyond). Probably doesn't even need to be said how good this stuff is and how well it holds up. I was pleasantly surprised to learn, after thinking that Psycho reminded me a lot more of a good AHP episode than a standard Hitchcock film, that he used the crew from his show to film the movie on the cheap. Again, probably a thing everyone but me was already aware of.

The upcoming release of I Drink Your Blood will also include I Eat Your Skin, fyi.

AND an extra obscure X-rated movie featuring Bhaskar, the crazy leader of the Satanists from Blood, and I'm not sure if that makes me want to buy it more or less.

Old Lunch- Are you going to do Karloff's Thriller too? As I said upthread, the horror and supernatural mystery episodes are in the minority (maybe less than 15% of all episodes), most of it is crime thrillers, so I never watched the whole box set. But it's pretty solid overall.

Did you go through all the universal monster films? What were your favourites? And any other highlights from the past year?

Thriller was on Netflix for quite awhile and I didn't notice until the week it was expiring. Watched as many of them as I could. Really loved it.

TOKYO: THE LAST MEGALOPOLIS

Based on Hiroshi Aramata's Teito Monogatari (The Tale of the Imperial Capital), a historical fantasy novel series which became a big franchise and is even credited with creating a boom in certain occult traditions.
The evil sorceror Kato became iconic and extensively ripped off and homaged. Vega/M Bison from Street Fighter is the best known of these tributes.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/Katospell.jpg

This film was one of the biggest 80s Japanese blockbusters. What's odd about it is that 90% of the action happens at the end. Most of the duration has characters talking about history and mythology, jumping back and forth between the 20s and the 80s. I found it impossible to follow and I've seen some reviews that suggest the film was best for people who already knew the story.

Giger contributed designs, some of which are very similar to the silver balls from Phantasm, but they're the only thing that really looks like Giger. There's stop motion creatures too but I was disappointed how little monsters were involved, one of them is a giant statue like something by Harryhausen. Kato has quite a camp villainess sidekick.

I didn't get much out of it aside from the villains and the swelling orchestra pieces, but I'd still like to see the sequel Tokyo: The Last War, which was never released in English.

The anime series Doomed Megalopolis May be a more familiar version to some of you. A friend told me it was very good.

Hideyuki Kikuchi's Demon City Shinjuku/Wicked City franchise predates Teito Monogatari and there are many similarities so I'd be surprised if it wasn't a big influence. I'd imagine Teito Monogatari is much better because the original Demon City Shinjuku novel is really bad, unless the translation I read was a heavy rewrite.

I'll for sure check out Thriller eventually. There's also a precursor miniseries starring Karloff that was never aired called The Veil that's been released on DVD.

I haven't watched all of the Universal pictures yet because that project kicked off a more comprehensive search for '30s horror movies. Which in turn triggered a '50s sci-fi/horror kick. My obsessive completist tendencies often butt heads with my ADD.

I wasn't aware of The Veil.

I was asked recently what was my favourite horror film. I couldn't answer but it seemed like there were probably only 20 horror films I truly loved at maximum and even then I'd have lots of reservations about a lot of them.
And a lot of them are borderline cases, and not because I think those are inherently better (as some people do).

One of my favourite borderline cases is The Shout and I was just thinking about how that never gets enough love. Please see it if you haven't seen it.

I just looked again into the availability of Ghost Of Yotsuya (Nakagawa version) and there is finally a dvd and a bunch of other 50s/60s Japanese horror films from a region 2 company called New Star. I bought it and something I've never heard of called The Ghost Cat Of Otama Pond.

There are like eight million Japanese films from that era that I know nothing about beyond the fact that they all have 'Kaidan' somewhere in the title.

Yes, a lot of them are very similar too, not unlike the j-horror wave. I might try out a few others from New Star but I'm not that optimistic.

There's like four or five Yotsuya films within that era. I've seen a mid50s black and white one, Illusion Of Blood and the Nakagawa version (the classic, probably best version).

So far Nakagawa's Ghost Of Yotsuya, House, Kwaidan, Kuroneko, Onibaba and Lake Of Dracula are the best old ones I've seen. I think Jigoku is quite overrated but there are cool scenes in it.

Have you seen The Shout? It's got John Hurt and Alan Bates.

88 Films (region 2 only?) are doing cult Asian films on disc, so far Hex, Black Magic and Seeding Of A Ghost are the horror films on that list. I think some of them have martial arts but may or may not focus on that.

The Shout is a fascinating film. Is the horror Bates' character's overwhelmingly charismatic aggressive masculinity or something more primal?

We're big horror fans in our house although my o/h tends to gravitate towards newer films. She's away this weekend and all I fancy doing is vegging out on the sofa and watching some classic and cult older flicks. Absolutely loved things like The Innocents, but I'm not really up on much from the 50s, 60s and 70s as much as recent things. What is good?

Obvs I've seen the Wicker Man and Blood On Satan's Claw - rural horrors / UK horrors are especially welcome.

Naked Blood (1996, Hisayasu Sato)
Repeat viewing. An alienated young man invents a serum that causes people to experience pain as pleasure, tragedy ensuses. This film seems known only to hardcore gore & transgression buffs, but I think it's an amazing work of art. A justly notorious (though relatively brief) midfilm auto-cannibalism setpiece drastically limits its potential audience, but I strongly recommend Naked Blood to anyone who thinks they might be able to stomach the gore. Surreal, quietly anguished and strangely haunting. A longtime personal favorite that holds up remarkably well.

This is one of the most messed-up films I've ever seen. One scene especially was enough to turn my friend a very peculiar pall of green.

DL, give this one a go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Demon

cheers, i will do just that :-)

Wish I could say there was loads of good rural horror but not much springs to mind.

Onibaba is set in fields of tall grass.

Night Of The Devils (70s Italian) is in an abandoned village in the woods.

Grapes Of Death is in a hilly village.

Let's Scare Jessica To Death.

I don't know why there isn't more rural horror because it should be cheap to film.

For UK stuff I'd go for Death Line, Curse Of The Werewolf, Mumsy Nanny Sonny & Girly, The Company Of Wolves, The Devils, Lair Of The White Worm.

Penda's Fen is British and rural but might not be horror enough.

The Shout is on the Devon coastline.

The VVitch is HIGHLY recommended rural horror if you haven't seen it yet.

oh yeah it's brilliant the VVitch, watched it the other day.

RAG - of that list I've only seen Let's Scare Jessica To Death. Been wanting to watch Penda's Fen for ages. Been watching a lot of that sort of hauntology folk-horror stuff lately.

Those Blind Dead films I recall taking place in the sticks.

Not a movie per se but don't sleep on Apaches.

Most of the UK films I listed aren't rural.

The Falling (which I was talking about in the newer horror film thread) has some of the vibe of a lot of the old folk horror stuff even if it isn't that setting.

I haven't read it yet but Richard Gavin's collection Sylvan Dread: Tales Of Pastoral Darkness sounds good.
https://threehandspress.com/sylvan-dread/

You could give some of the BBC ghost stories for Christmas a shot. I'd pick Whistle and I'll Come to You followed by A Warning to the Curious and The Signalman.

I've read The Signalman - it's pretty good

Actually Schalcken the Painter is up there with Whistle as the best of them.

Lots of good Australian horror/not horror too like Picnic at Hanging Rock, Wake in Fright and Long Weekend

I found Schalcken a bit of disappointment, I must admit - so low-key as to barely be a ghost story at all, and a little bit as a consequence. On the other hand Robin Redbreast, also excavated by the BFI, is second only to the Wicker Man in the rural creep stakes.

little bit DULL

Nah I was into how low-key it was and found John Justin genuinely unnerving