Tags: psycho

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Month. I don't know what makes men like Ed Gein superstars, when all they leave behind them is suffering, loss and madness. Maybe it's that their stories are so bizarrely gothic and so filled with lurid details that no movie could make up. Ironically movies about these creatures will later appear - the weird parts repackaged for general consumption. After this we can relax, take a breath and tell ourselves, "Well heck, it's only a movie." When this happens enough, when we've seen the film, read the books and got the pez dispenser, men like Gein become no more real to us than a Leatherface, a Freddy Krueger or King Kong. Soon they have a separate 'star image' and while they still give most of us the chills, for others they are 'anti-heroes' or symbols of rebellion. Perhaps this is the only way we can make life bearable, by fictionalizing them, making fun and denying anything really ever happened. But it did happen and Gein was real. So were his victims.(read more...)

Another Shiverin' 6, folks, this time focusing on some of the best horror flicks released fifty years ago in 1960. They come from all around the globe and from all sorts of genres, but they're all highly recommended. As always, the Shiverin' 6 represents some of the best from a given category, not necessarily the best. As such, the entries aren't ranked but listed alphabetically. Be sure to let us know in the comments what some of your favorites from 1960 are!(read more...)

On June 16, 1960, a film premiered in New York City that would change the face of the horror film -- nay, film in general -- forever. Psycho's effect on filmmaking is incalculable, even if you only track the influences of its most famous sequence, the shower murder. Over the past half-century, various movies and television shows have parodied, pastiched, paid homage, remade and ripped-off Alfred Hitchcock's "clean kill." I've spent the last two months piecing some of these clips together into a meta-homage. May I present to you, the Psycho shower sequence, rebuilt almost entirely from other films.

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When Classic-Horror.com returns from its hiatus in May, we'll be featuring a number of regular columns tracking different aspects of the horror genre. Here's a preview of one such column, Jose Cruz's study of horror in literature, Cold Reads. 

"Norman Bates heard the noise and a shock went through him." And so begins this timeless tale, a story that is guaranteed to send a few jolts of nervousness through your veins as well. Overshadowed by its celluloid counterpart, Psycho the book has all the creeping chills of the movie along with the great privilege of having Mr. Robert Bloch to guide us through the long, dark corridors of both the Bates house and the minds of its inhabitants.(read more...)

The seventh annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards were announced last night during a special chat session over at the Classic Horror Film Board (no relation to Classic-Horror.com). Presenting the awards was the founder of the Rondos and owner of the CHFB, David Colton (known as taraco on the boards). Some of the attendees included Video Watchdog writers Tim Lucas and Shane M. Dallmann, Embodiment of Evil actor Raymond Castile, Cinema Suicide proprietor Bryan White, and many many more (read this as, if I'd thought about it, I'd totally have written some names down instead of relying on my frequently faulty memory). (read more...)

As an avid follower of author/actor Wil Wheaton's blog for the past several years, I've read all about his interest in science fiction, gaming, comic books, and other geeky pursuits. But until a casual conversation I had with him at Phoenix Comicon this year, I had no idea that he was also a fellow horror fan. Later that day, Wil graciously took a few minutes of his time to talk with me about his love of horror and some of his favorite films in the genre.(read more...)

Sometimes, we get contacted to do an article to coincide with the release of a theatrical film or DVD. Most of the time, we don't do it because we either don't have any ideas or there are no good ideas for that particular movie. The PR folks for Universal's recent remake of The Hitcher (coming out on DVD May 1st -- check the cover art at the bottom of the page) had something different, however -- a good idea. They said, "Hey, guys, we have somebody getting yanked apart by two semi trucks in our movie. What about listing off some other brutal and/or sadistic deaths?" I was intrigued, which is often enough to get me to put fingers to keyboard, so here we go.

The list presented below isn't definitive. These aren't necessarily the ten most brutal or sadistic deaths in a horror movie, just the ones we thought were notable. Your mileage may vary. Each entry is accompanied by a screencap that can be accessed by clicking the thumbnail icon below the film title.(read more...)