Frightmare (1974)

Aka Cover Up. And on this eve of lost souls it is only right to return to the world of Pete Walker, that sleazy trash maestro of Britcult, encompassing cannibalism, lunacy and serial killing. As you were.  Jackie Yates (Deborah Fairfax) has been dreading the release from a mental asylum of her father Edmund (Rupert Davies) and stepmother Dorothy (Sheila Keith) who apparently ate 6 of their victims in a 1957 killing spree. Now they’re back. And a lot of young people are disappearing in the neighbourhood. Time for Jackie to turn Nancy Drew with her boyfriend Graham (Paul Greenwood). The complicating issue in her quest to stop the driller killers is her stepsister Debbie (Kim Butcher!) who wanders  off at night with a biker gang and appears to have a genetic predisposition to human flesh …  Written by Walker and David McGillivray with sounds by Stanley Myers (any relation to Michael?!) in an outing which boasts the usual Walker flourishes and desposits what Rosemary Woodhouse might call a sort of chalky undertaste. Notable for an appearance by the lovely Leo Genn in his second last screen appearance ever, as psychiatrist Dr Lytell. Care in the community? Psycho on the streets! Happy Halloween!

Bewitched (2005)

Way back when, a friend saw a movie before me and her review was succinct:  “The fireplaces were marvellous.” And, aside from a wonderful cat called Lucinda who greatly resembles my own lovely Frodo, for a while that’s pretty much how I felt about this Nora Ephron outing – exacerbated in no small way by the fact that at the screening I attended there was a soundtrack of contemporary music for the first 10 minutes – the projectionist’s personal choice. So much for postmodernism – for that’s exactly what this is, an interweaving of the old TV show with a modern interpretation of how a reboot is put together by egomaniac freshly divorced and failing film star Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell) who bumps into the best nose-twitcher in LA, Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman). She’s a newbie to the Valley in an effort to enter the mortal realm and be normal – so she becomes an actress. Only in LA. She falls hard for Jack but his weaselly agent Ritchie (Jason Schwartzmann) rubbishes the idea in her hearing. She wants to put a spell on him and it works, for a while. The scriptwriter (Heather Burns, who also acted for Ephron in You’ve Got Mail) gives her great lines and shows up Jack/Darrin. “Nobody likes Darrin!” he whines when the preview numbers are in and she’s a hit and he’s not. Nora and Delia Ephron wrote this with Adam McKay who’s long been house writer/director of that bromance crew led by Ferrell. Here, warlock dad (Michael Caine) isn’t too impressed with the real world translation of immortal shenanigans but co-star Iris playing Endora (Shirley Maclaine) literally puts a spell on him because she’s got a witchy secret of her own. Halfway through Isabel rewinds her spell on Jack and their story re-starts – right in the middle of his guest interview with James Lipton, which is absolutely appropriate. Steve Carell and Carole Shelley have nice bits as Uncle Arthur and Clara, Ferrell gets to go naked in front of Conan and Nicole has a ball in a light as air souffle, just as Ephron would have served up for one of her carefully constructed meals, with an I Love You scene that perfectly fuses the structural ambitions of this postmodern romcom. Are Isabel and Jack in love with each other? Their characters? The idea? Themselves? That is the question … “I’m about to be killed by a fictional character!” squeaks Jack at one point. Well, duh. And the kitchen is marvellous!

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

London 1929. When the Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee) arrives with his friend Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) at the home of his protege Simon Aron (Patrick Mower) for a party he realises at once the young man is involved in devil worship and tries to extricate him from the clutches of the cult led by Mocata (Charles Gray). The other initiate Tanith (Nike Arrighi) is the medium through whom Mocata works and is essential to the plan to bring out the Devil at a ceremony on Salisbury Plain.  In order to defend them, the Duc has to create a protective circle with his niece and her husband that involves Mocata conjuring the Angel of Death to draw out his influence and take the couple’s child as a channel for evil. Dennis Wheatley’s novel is brilliantly adapted by Richard Matheson, and the material as a whole is treated with the kind of seriousness which elevates it from melodrama into  dramatic allegory, a duel between good and evil. This may be the best ever Hammer and the best film by director Terence Fisher. Lee is fabulous as the one strongwilled man capable of testing the forces of destruction while all around him is weakness, scepticism and naivete.  So terrifying.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

It was a dark and stormy summer night on Long Island when I first saw this and I can barely re-watch it to this day. The story of serial killer Freddy Krueger and the teens whose dreams he inhabits was an epoch-defining event in the horror genre and made Wes Craven’s name as well as starting a profitable franchise and introducing Johnny Depp to the world (although he’s soon swallowed by his own bed.) Heather Langenkamp is the cop’s daughter who draws the short straw and has to lure Freddy out so he can be captured …  Don’t fall asleep. Don’t take a bath. Don’t unplug the phone. And don’t be the child of a vigilante! Perfect Halloween horror.

Addams Family Values (1993)

Those paragons of the paranormal are back. Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) are entirely unhappy at the arrival of moustachioed Baby Pubert and plot his death at every possible opportunity so Morticia (Anjelica Huston) and Gomez (Raul Julia) hire a nanny. Problem is, Debbie (Joan Cusack), always with the ready quip, has eyes on Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd) and persuades the folks that summer camp is the place for the kids while she commences her seduction. The scenes at camp are a hoot, with Wednesday falling for geeky Joel (David Krumholtz) and causing total havoc at an unforgettable Thanksgiving show run by horrifically perky Peter MacNicol and Christine Baranski. This is a scream from start to finish with killer lines like, where all those Addams men come from: “It has to be damp.” Ricci delivers a peerless performance – what an extraordinary child she was! Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld from a screenplay by Paul Rudnick, adapting the Charles Addams characters in a slightly more macabre fashion than the original. Extremely funny indeed.

Frankenweenie (2012)

A real return to form for Tim Burton with another stop-motion animation, this time a remake/expanded version of a decades-old short, the story of Young Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) who is devastated by the death of his dog Sparky but through science class and an experiment on a dead frog, he learns how he might bring him back to life. A glorious spin on the Frankenstein story with a genius character by the name of Edgar, a creepy bug-eyed buck-toothed little hunchback frenemy who rats out Victor’s secret and soon all the animals in the pet cemetery are making a return … Written by Leonard Ripps (in 1984) from Burton’s original idea, with a screenplay by John August and apologies to the source, Mary Shelley who probably never saw this one coming! A great pastiche of monster movies. Brilliant, moving and funny as hell. Love it.

Corpse Bride (2005)

Aka Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. With the season of spookiness upon us it’s time to look at this stop-motion animation, a reverie of marriage and death and multiple scary lairy characters. In a monochrome world shy sweet pianist Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp) is about to marry Victoria (Emily Watson) by arrangement through socially ambitious parents when a branch from a tree drags him to the land of the dead where murdered Emily (Helena Bonham Carter) wants to marry HIM. She reunites him with his dead pet dog as the newly married man (albeit to a dead woman) descends to a paradoxical world of colour which is great fun but he needs to get back to reality to ensure Victoria isn’t ensnared in a marriage to villainous Barkis Bittern (Richard E. Grant) who is eventually revealed to be the fiance who murdered Emily! If it’s a little incoherent on the story level it’s fun to watch, with some star talent having fun – Enn Reitel as the maggot/conscience in Emily’s brain, Christopher Lee as Pastor Galswells, Joanna Lumley as Victoria’s mother and composer Danny Elfman as a one-eyed skeleton (modelled on Sammy Davis Jr.). It’s maybe too smooth for stop-motion (using a different camera than the one on Nightmare Before Christmas) but it’s always good to watch Burton’s macabre work at Halloween. Screenplay by John August, Caroline Thompson and Pamela Pettler based on characters created by Burton and Carlos Grangel.

The Watcher in the Woods (1980)

Or, Disney’s version of a horror movie. This adaptation of the novel by noted Gothic/YA author Florence Engel Randall was quite the thing when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and Bette Davis was there for the connoisseur. My Disney idol was Kim Richards but it’s her little sister Kyle who features here as Ellie the younger of two girls (the elder being Lynn-Holly Johnson as Jan) whose family has relocated to England.  They lease an old country house and the girls are haunted by the spirit of old crone Davis’ daughter who disappeared thirty years before, in what appears to have been some sort of teenagers’ initiation ceremony in a derelict church during a solar eclipse. Jan bears a startling resemblance to the missing girl, Karen, and sees flashes of blue light in the woods while Ellie appears to be hearing voices coming from the new family dog whom she has christened Nerak – which spells Karen backwards. The messages come frequently and they have to try to rescue Karen from another dimension during the next eclipse … Children’s author Mom (Carroll Baker) has to deal with the problem while composer Dad (David McCallum) heads to London to produce a musical. Director John Hough had some form with this blend of supernature and sci fi – being a veteran of the Witch Mountain movies starring Kim Richards and featuring one Bette Davis in the second entry, Return From Witch Mountain. There was some issue with the concluding scenes and in the second version the effects happened too quickly to make sense of the story while Vincent McEveety was then drafted in to do a version that was released in 1981. Personally I was thrilled to see my old heart throb Benedict Taylor turn up in the cast – remember him in Beau Geste on Sunday evenings? And The Far Pavilions! And My Brother Jonathan. And A Perfect Spy…  Dominic Guard appears (uncredited) in Ian Bannen’s role in the flashbacks. Guard is now a children’s author himself, amongst other things. I’m almost as thrilled to see Kyle Richards on a Raleigh Chopper. (And Georgina Hale as Karen, of course!)  Adapted by Brian Clemens, Harry Spalding and Rosemary Anne Sisson, soundtracked by Stanley Meyers and nicely shot by Alan Hume. This is quite fascinating.

Another Shore (1948)

Ealing whimsy could fall between two stools – and tragicomedy is the acknowledged text of this outing, set in dear old dirty Dublin, a begrimed metropolis one year before the Republic was declared. Gulliver Shields (Robert Beatty) is a bored customs clerk who throws in his job for a ruse witnessing traffic accidents opposite Trinity College, much to the annoyance of the usual hoi polloi who hang around in the porticoes of the Bank of Ireland. His aim is to get enough cash to go to the South Seas paradise of Raratonga. Nice girl Jennifer (Moira Lister) drinks nearby in the Buttery (hi Matt!) and takes a fancy to him, ultimately causing a disruption to his plans which might yet see the light of day after he falls in with (or in front of) wealthy Alastair (Stanley Holloway), who made his money in Tahiti… Beatty probably wasn’t the man for this unconvincing adaptation of the book by Kenneth Reddin (who was to become a judge), handled perhaps as well as the material allowed by Walter Meade, who also wrote that lovely film Brandy for the Parson as well as Scott of the Antarctic. There’s an interesting score by Georges Auric but Charles Crichton would do a lot better in the director’s chair. However the post-war setting is worth seeing – in a country where WW2 was called The Emergency, a state which has yet to be officially lifted.

Overboard (1987)

I have never willingly foregone an opportunity to watch a Goldie Hawn movie:  she’s my kind of girl. And Leslie Dixon is a damned fine screenwriter – this was her sophomore outing – and as for Garry Marshall… well we know all about how well he could commandeer a comedy and make it as charming as you like. This is the screwball one on the boat where Goldie’s the rich bitch travelling up the Pacific coast with hubby Edward Herrmann being roundly abusive to all the staff and particularly carpenter Kurt Russell whom she hires to remodel her closet. When she’s picked up by a garbage scow after a late-night fall, Herrmann affects not to know her and Russell pretends she’s his wife and the mother of his four near-feral sons and makes hay out of her amnesia. She just knows she wasn’t meant for life in a hovel but weirdly becomes attached to the kids even after they’ve Superglued her hands to serving plates. Then her mother guilt trips her hubby out of partying with his girl pals and he goes looking for her … This works as a pastiche of 1930s screwball comedy and populist fable but more than that it capitalises on the charisma of the cast which includes Roddy McDowall who executive produced. It’s beautifully photographed by the venerable John A. Alonzo and boasts a song by Randy Newman and while it’s not a classic Goldie is always worth a whirl – not to mention she’s paired with real life love Kurt – and it’s now attained cult status. Go on. You know you’ll love it.