The Mad Doc's Top Ten Childhood Horror Flicks
Jul 01 '03
The Bottom Line Look out behind you!
Every once in awhile ya just get in the mood to do a list. I've already covered Medieval/fantasy, Dumas, King Arthur, Sci-Fi and Comedy... so naturally horror is next.
This is another one of those very tough genres to pare down to 10, so these are the ten I like best from my childhood, out of the ones I can remember at the moment... which means I'm a chick and can change my mind at any time with no apparent reason. Deal with it. heh. And oh yeah, no particular order...
Several of these I have written full reviews for, so if it's underlined, you can click on it and read more detail.
1. Masque of the Red Death ~ Roger Corman and Vincent Price.. one of the best duos to ever make a horror flick. Based on a Poe story... Price is the dreaded Prince of a village that is dying from the Red Death..and Price is throwing a party...
2. 13 Ghosts (The original) ~ Bite me. It scared me to death as a kid! I was about 11 and babysitting my brat kid brother and sister. It was really late and Creature Feature was on. This is what they were showing. When my parents got home I was curled up on the coach scared to death! I couldn't turn it off...and yet I was terrified! Tis about a guy who inherits a house that happens to have some ghosts in a room in the basement....
3. Rosemary's Baby ~ Based on the novel by Ira Levin, 1968's Rosemary's Baby was the scariest movie going at the time. By today's standards it's relatively boring, but back then.. ooooh back then! I remember it well. It scared me enough to be afraid of ever getting married and having a baby! This doesn't strictly come under the same time period as the others, but I did read the book when it came out and the images haunted me well until the movie was released.
4. Premature Burial ~ Ray Miland this time, rather than Price... Price was who Corman wanted to star in this, but couldn;t get him due to contractual obligations and financial fights with AIP. Miland plays a guy who is very afraid of being buried alive. He builds possibly the coolest mausoleum you will ever see.
5. Fall of the House of Usher ~ Based on the Poe story of the same name, the family Usher is cursed, you see, due to a long history of murderers and the like in the bloodline. The land surrounding the family estate has gone barren and spooky, and the house has a life of it's own. Enter young Philip (Mark Damon) who had met and fell in love with the last female in the line, Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey), while she was on holiday. He's traveled a very long way to be with her again only to find much weirdness afoot. The elder brother, Roderick Usher (Vincent Price), will not allow Madeline to leave the house... does insist that the house itself will not allow them to leave again.... and he goes so far as to inter Madeline alive in an attempt to trick Philip into leaving without her. That's when things get interesting!
6. Frankenstein ~ It's all about Boris Karloff! Must have watched this 20 times growing up. That fire always scared the dickens out me.. I always wanted the monster to get away. Mean ol' town people anyway!
7. Pit and the Pendulum ~ Poe, Price and Corman! They almost single handedly raised my sorry self. One of the best endings in the history of film. Ahhh poetic justice is sooo sweet.
8. Psycho ~ If you saw this movie as a kid, you didn't take a shower for a very, very long time..and you had fits when your parents wanted to stop at a motel for the night... actually, Norman's mom quite resembled my own mom.. hmmmm
9. Dunwich Horror ~ tis about this sweet librarian, Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee), who is charged with watching over the infamous Necronomicon (bad evil book, later turned up in Evil Dead.. this book gets around!). This book is owned by the visiting philosopher, Dr. Henry Armitage (Ed Begley Sr). There just happens to be a spooky family nearby in Dunwich who want this book. Ya see, Wilbur Whateley comes from a long line of folks who believe in the Old Ones, or a group of superior beings from another dimension who once ruled the world. Wilbur aims to bring them back!
10. The Tingler ~ My 10th birthday. A snow storm is raging, our power is out. We bundle up and go to my cousin's house for the night. Creature Feature is about to come on with Ronnie and her cat..anyone remember her as the host? Aunt Ginny is popping corn and all the lights are off... my cousin Ricky sneaks up behind me during a key scene and lightly runs his fingers up my back! *scream* Whew.. you see, the only way to live once the Tingler attatches itself to your spine is to scream and scream and scream! Vincent Price is his usual scary self.
Ten is just not enough!! We still have The Blob, The Thing the the the.... errrr.. ok.. I'll have to do a Monster list soon I see....
So there ya have it. These are the films that produced the warped twist you have before you. Blame it on the movies! muwahahahhahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
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Member: Lori Leidig
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