Sometimes you need to go back to the classics.
This is especially true as Halloween approaches. As you prepare for your spooky movie marathon, here are 10 iconic horror movies from the past 70 years for inspiration, and what AP writers had to say when they were first released. .
We have brought excerpts from these reviews back from the dead, edited for clarity. Have they stood the test of time?
“Rear Window” (1954)
“Rear Window” is a great trick that Alfred Hitchcock pulled off. He breaks the main character’s leg and makes him stand by the window of his apartment, where he can observe the murders happening on the other side of the courtroom. A panorama of someone else’s life unfolds before you, as if seen through Peeping Tom’s eyes.
James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and others make it a lot of fun.
— Bob Thomas
“Halloween” (1978)
19-year-old Jamie Lee Curtis is starring in a creepy little thriller called “Halloween.”
Jamie’s main accomplishment so far has been appearing as a regular on the TV series Operation Petticoat. Jamie is more proud of “Halloween,” which is clearly an exploitation film aimed at the thrill market.
The idea for “Halloween” came from independent production and distribution company Irwin Yablans, who wanted a horror story involving babysitters. John Carpenter and Debra Hill wrote a screenplay about a madman who murders his sister, escapes from an asylum, and returns to his hometown with the intention of murdering his sister’s friends.
— Bob Thomas
“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)
“The Silence of the Lambs” moves from one exciting sequence to the next. Jonathan Demme spares the audience nothing, including close-ups of skinned corpses. If you’re a picky eater, it’s best to stay home and watch “The Cosby Show.”
Ted Tully expertly adapted Thomas Harris’s novel, and Demme twisted the suspense to near breaking point. The climactic showdown between Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) is definitely an exciting, if slightly over-the-top, well-edited sequence.
A story like “The Silence of the Lambs” requires skilled actors to pull it off. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins are highly talented. She has a steely intelligence yet enough vulnerability to maintain suspense. He provides a classic depiction of pure, glorious evil.
— Bob Thomas
“Scream” (1996)
In this clever and witty homage to the genre, students at a suburban California high school are murdered in the same gruesome manner as the victims of the slasher movies they know by heart.
Going back and forth at your local movie theater may sound like the script for any other horror movie, but it’s not.
story continues
At once terrifying and funny, “Scream,” written by newcomer David Williamson, is as tense as a thriller, intelligent without being self-congratulatory, and a rival to Wes Craven’s gore work. There are generous references to them.
— Ned Kilkelly
“The Blair Witch Project” (1999)
When you hear “The Blair Witch Project,” words come to mind: imaginative, intense, and brilliant.
“Blair Witch” is a video allegedly discovered after three student filmmakers disappeared while filming a documentary about a legendary witch in the woods of western Maryland.
The filmmakers want us to believe that the footage is real, that the story is real, that three young people have died, and that we are witnessing the last days of their lives. it’s not. It’s all fiction.
But Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick, who co-wrote and co-directed the film, took us into a state of belief that had us squirming in our seats the entire time. It’s an ambitious and well-executed concept.
— Christy Lemire
“Saw” (2004)
The horror movie “Saw” is at least consistent.
This serial killer story is badly planned, badly written, poorly acted, poorly directed, badly shot, badly edited, and all of these elements lead to a surprising ending. What’s more, the music is also bad.
Even if this sordid little horror incident gave you chills and scares, you’ll be able to forgive all of the film’s flaws (not all, or even some, quite a bit).
But when Saw director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell crafted the story together, what they came up with was an exercise in nastiness and ugliness.
— David Germain
Director Jarman gave Saw one star out of four.
“Paranormal Activity” (2009)
The no-budget ghost story Paranormal Activity arrived a decade after The Blair Witch Project, and the two horror films have more in common than clever compositions and shaky handheld camerawork. Masu.
The entire film takes place in the couple’s cookie-cutter home, whose floor plan and furnishings are indistinguishable from any other manufactured home built in the past 20 years. That ordinariness, as well as the anonymity of the actors who play the lead roles aptly, make the spooky nighttime activities all the more frightening.
The thinness of the setting becomes clear toward the end, but it’s not enough to erase the horror of the quiet night footage seen through the camera in Micah’s bedroom. There’s a raw, primal power to “Paranormal Activity,” proving once again that suggestion is as powerful to the mind as a sledgehammer to the skull.
— Glenn Whipp
Whip gave “Paranormal Activity” 3 out of 4 stars.
“The Conjuring” (2013)
Sympathetic and methodical Ghostbuster Lorraine, along with Ed Warren, Vera Farmiga, and Patrick Wilson, make The Conjuring, a classic haunted house horror movie, more than a run-of-the-mill horror fest.
“The Conjuring,” which incredibly boasts of being the most horrifying case ever known, is very much in the 70s-style mold of “Amityville,” and, if you’re kind, “The Exorcist.” is built on. The film opens with a solemn, eerie title card that expresses a desire for such a lineage.
But while “The Conjuring” is effectively produced, it lacks the raw, haunting power of its model. However, “The Exorcist” has a high standard. The Conjuring is an unusually solid piece of filmmaking in the haunted house genre.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “The Conjuring” 2.5 stars out of 4.
Read the full review here.
“Get Out” (2017)
Fifty years after Sidney Poitier upended the latent racial prejudices of his girlfriend’s liberal family in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” writer/director Jordan Peele directed “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”・Out” created a similar conflict with a more fiery outcome.
In Peele’s directorial debut, the former “Key & Peele” star upends even supposedly progressive assumptions about race, as he often did in that satirical sketch series. But Peele left most of the comedy behind to make the racism that lurks more horrifyingly behind the white smiles and defensive, paper-thin protests like “But I Voted for Obama!” I drew it with a depiction. “Isn’t Tiger Woods amazing?”
It’s long been a deplorable joke in horror movies, by no means the most inclusive genre, that the black guy always comes first. In this way, “Get Out” has a new and fresh perspective.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “Get Out” three stars out of four.
Read the full review here.
“Hereditary” (2018)
Hereditary, Ari Aster’s intensely nightmarish feature debut, follows Annie (Toni Collette), an artist and mother of two teenagers, who joins a grief support group after her mother’s death. When she sneaks out, she lies to her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) that she’s “going to the movies.”
A “Hereditary” night out can be many things, but don’t confuse it with a night of solace and therapy. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Aster’s films were relentlessly disturbing and relentlessly gripping, with an eerie atmosphere of danger and fear. It’s such a scary and good movie that you have to see it, even if you don’t want to, even if you can’t sleep peacefully. Also.
The hype is mostly justified.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave Hereditary three stars out of four.
Read the full review here. ___
Researcher Rhonda Schaffner contributed from New York.
