We don't decorate or dress up for Halloween, and we don't get any trick or treaters. But we do watch scary movies. We caught Horror Of Dracula at least three times, plus another Hammer Dracula movie. I watched The Wolf Man Halloween night.
These other films, we recorded and saved.
The Uninvited--while on holiday, a brother and sister find a beautiful, abandoned cliffside house and impulsively buy it. The only catch: it's haunted. One room is deadly cold; the pets won't go upstairs. TCM described this as the first film to treat ghosts seriously. Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey (I remember her from The Philadelphia Story) star with Donald Crisp. It's a good film with strong performances especially from Gail Russell and Cornelia Otis Skinner.
The Conqueror Worm--this is a confusing title; it was chosen for US audiences. The original title, Witchfinder General, makes sense. Vincent Price plays Matthew Hopkings the traveling witchfinder who tortures and executes witches for a fee and sexual favors during the British Civil War. After he targets a priest and his beautiful niece, a Roundhead solder engaged to the niece seeks revenge. The revenge subplot takes over the film. In the final scenes the soldier is watching his fiancee being tortured. The soldier's friends rescue them and kill Hopkins. As the fiancee screams, the solder ignores her to complain that he didn't get to kill Hopkins himself. Way to make it about himself.
House of Usher--A man visits his fiancee in a crumbling mansion and wants to take her away from her creepy brother Roderick Usher (Vincent Price.) The film has good production values and is suitably gruesome--Roderick buries his sister alive--but I just didn't get into it.
The Blackening--I heard some college professors on NPR discussing horror movies. One mentioned this movie and it happened to be on TV that night. A group of eight college friends rent a house to celebrate Juneteenth. The film was funnier than it was scary. I liked the joke that none of them admitted to watching Friends but knew all the black guest stars.
House of the Seven Gables--this is more of a gothic romance with a hint of the supernatural than a horror movie. Jaffrey Pynchon (George Sanders) secures the murder conviction of his brother Clifford (Vincent Price) while Clifford's fiance Hepzibah (Margaret Lindsay) waits for his release. I teared up when the lovers were reunited and appreciated the happy ending. According to TCM, Margaret Lindsay considered this her best performance. I have to agree: she was fantastic.
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