Posts by Robert Ring

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Month. I was a late bloomer in my appreciation of horror cinema. Aside from sporadic outings to see mass-market horror films, I did not discover the true joys of the genre until I was in college. As I journeyed through classics like Alien, Halloween, and Rosemary's Baby, I was occasionally frightened or unsettled in various ways, but it was all enjoyable horror, the kind that can be intense but that ultimately leaves the psyche unscarred. Then I saw The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. As I watched this film, a deep-seated, almost unidentifiable anxiety began to build within me from the opening scenes - scenes which contain very little horror. Then, as I watched the characters experience physical and psychological torment later in the film, that building anxiety exploded into outright dismay. I was so disturbed by this movie that it would be six years before I watched it again, and even then it retained a potent effect. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is not so much creative in its approach to instilling horror as it is merciless, breaking down viewers' defenses before hitting them on all sides with unimaginable terror. This is one of the most horrifying films ever made.(read more...)

In the horror genre, when a house stands out as a primary component, it is often going to be haunted.  In The Old Dark House, however, director James Whale uses a house in a different, more rewarding way: as a metaphor for the psyche.  Things like seldom-visited rooms, locked closets, and at-odds inhabitants provide rich ground for such use. The fact that these elements succeed in achieving a level creepiness on par with that of your average haunted house film says something rather unsettling about the way our heads work.  The Old Dark House is a house-as-head movie that examines repression, fear, and the role of the new, constructed with the adeptness one would expect from the great James Whale.(read more...)

The Beyond can be difficult for people to "get," often feeling like a linear narrative that is thrown together without any sense of "how" or "why," but in reality the events' lack of logic is exactly what makes them horrifying. Combine this purposeful lack of logic with deceptively adept pacing, and you have a true horror masterpiece.(read more...)

Since its release in 1929, Un Chien Andalou has remained one the best and most famous examples of surrealist cinema.  It does exactly what surrealist works are supposed to do: sequence random images and events so as to touch its audience in a way that logic cannot.  Though it is not a horror film per se, in which the viewer is threatened by a monster, a madman, or some other tangible force, the film does contain a number of horrific images, and its dreamlike construction can at times instill a fear beyond rationality. Director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí compile images and scenes that will make you cringe, laugh, vomit, and cock your head - and they compact them into seventeen unforgettable, never-boring minutes that constantly seem to draw from the most hidden depths of our unconscious. Put succinctly, Un Chien Andalou is a masterpiece.
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