Posts by Nate Yapp

The Howling is one of the formative films of my own horror experience, important to me as The Wolf Man, Pit and the Pendulum, and The Evil Dead. True, it is a trifle of a film, a werewolf romp with not other desire but simple thrills. On the other hand, it's a werewolf romp that succeeds at providing simple thrills with flair.(read more...)

Fritz Lang's M is not, strictly speaking, a horror film. A simplistic identification for it would be crime drama, but M is not simplistic. Behind its single-letter title lies a wealth of complexities. Yes, in one way, it is a crime drama, but it's also a commentary on German society, a suspense thriller, and, in one sense, it's an incredibly unsettling horror story.

Mostly responsible for that horror is Peter Lorre, who plays a child murderer haunting Dusseldorf, Germany. The performance -- which is at turns grandiose, stricken, lascivious, and pathetic -- is not always the focus of the camera, but it is always the focus of the film. Even when Lorre is not on screen, his mannerisms and his horrible compulsions haunt the proceedings. After the film is over, he is still there, whistling into our ear.(read more...)

Georges Franju's 1959 horror classic Eyes Without a Face (aka Les yeux sans visage and The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus) opens on a woman driving a car through the French countryside. She looks nervously at the pair of headlights that are gaining on her. Her backseat passenger is cloaked in a trenchcoat and a fedora that is pulled low, obscuring his or her features. We get the feeling that there is something wrong with this person, and the driver's increasing paranoia does nothing to assuage the fear. The headlights draw nearer and finally pass the woman's car, which has stopped. The driver is relieved, but we are not -- the person in the back has slumped awkwardly. This isn't a living person after all, but a corpse that the woman will soon struggle to dump in a nearby body of water.(read more...)

Universal's first monster movie since Dracula's Daughter in 1936, Son of Frankenstein kicked off the studio's second horror cycle. Lavishly produced sets and a lead cast of horror luminaries marked it as an auspicious beginning. Although the wit of James Whale is sorely missed, Rowland V. Lee brings a quality of his own to the movie, making it as much a necessity to the genre as Bride of Frankenstein.(read more...)