That’s a possibility I hadn’t considered; that, or maybe I got my expectations so keyed up that the movies were anticlimactic.
I don’t really think so…I like the look and feel of black and white photos and films quite a lot, and there are numerous b&w fright flix I respond to very well…Curse of the Demon, the original Night of the Living Dead, and The Haunting are the first three that spring to mind.
One convention of older movies that does bother me, though, is the bloodless violence. You know --someone’s shot, he just keels over without a mark on him, like the soundwave killed him. Someone else is stabbed and there’s a dagger sticking out of her dry, unstained blouse. The “horribly mangled body” of the monster’s latest victim is seen to be totally unmarked. That always struck me as being both dishonest and chicken. I require a bit more realism in presentation than that.
My SO, who was born in 1943, saw a re-release of King Kong when he was about 6 or 7 (in a theatre - in NYC). For the longest time, when he would go up & down the stairs of his Bronx apartment building, he would crawl under the windows on the landings so that Kong couldn’t reach him.
VCNJ~
The Tingler was on OnDemand recently. Black and white, no real violence…and still a creepy movie. Thankfully it’s never been remade. So that’s an oldy but a goody.
I think the censorship code in place in the US from 1934-1965 or so was a real problem for horror filmmakers and limited them greatly in what they could do. They were pretty much limited to suspense and psychological horror, so guys like Lawton and Tourneir got very good at those forms. They couldn’t show anything gory, hell, they had to imply violence of any sort for the most part. And the good guys always had to win in the end. Like most of the stuff made during that period, it was like watching a 100-pound overweight man run a 400-yard-dash. Such a competitor might do very well, considerig he’s carrying 100 pounds of lard with him, but he’s not going to set any records or anything.
I have that DVD too!
The American edit is actually Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
Apparently, Toho Studios came up with the alternate name the first (unsuccessful) time they tried to sell the film to America.
And, of course, Gojira is itself merely an edited version of the original film Go Mifune which depicted the monster driving a gigantic race car. The original film was much better, but studio executives felt the movie was actually TOO terrifying, and ordered the scenes reshot. Originally Godzilla destroyed Tokyo by mowing down buildings with his car’s giant extensible saw blades. Also, the scene where Godzilla opened the trunk and discovered King Kong and Raymond Burr hiding inside was deemed too graphic for Japanese audiences.
This isn’t as old as the movies mentioned upthread, but The Changeling with George Scott (1980) scared the bejeezus outta me and it didn’t show a single spook or monster - they were all implied through the use of strange noises and moving furniture. I think as long as somebody hasn’t already been jaded by todays gore and FX overloaded movies, it would still be just as scary.
Don’t know if it’s true but I’ve heard that in the beginnings of the film era, there were a lotof novelty films, like just 10 minutes of a train approaching the camera, and that alone was enough to scare the audience (image of train coming towards you at high speed). Like special effects, what it takes to effect people keeps evolving.
There’s also probably the element of that watching any seriously outdated movie, the general oddness of the film quality and way people speak, etc, can take you out of the film.
Plus, people probably related to these movies as more like theatrical plays or novels, where you fill in a lot with your own imagination.
Excellent choice, The Changeling. It definitely holds up, unless you’re a gorehound. My kids used to scare each other by bouncing balls down the stairs. (I drew the line at tearing up the floors though.)
I found it very scary and I grew up watching the gory slasher films of the '80s. Moving forward about twenty years, I also thought The Others was very scary and atmospheric and it would easily have passed the Hays Code censors.
There are horror movies, and then there are monster movies.
I guess **The Tingler **merges the two forms a bit.
Some horror movies do not stand the test of time. I don’t think The Exorcist does. The Changeling does, and is the only movie where I’ve ever seen my husband jump in his seat.
(We originally saw it in the theater.)
And old black and white movie which is still creepy to me is Carnival of Souls. Night of the Demon is another one that still chills.
I was thinking about this thread yesterday & it occurred to me that while I am sure that no-one seeing Karloff’s debut in FRANKENSTEIN thought “meh- he’s no Charles Ogle,” it’s quite possible that someone first seeing Lugosi’s DRACULA could think “meh- he’s no Max Schreck!”
