The granddaddy of all haunted house movies. Doctor John Markway, desirous of connecting the worlds of science and the supernatural, gathers his own little group of ghost hunters to spend the summer at Hill House in hopes of doing just that. During their stay they encounter the usual strange occurrences and things that go bump… Read more

Tom Holland was quite keen to do a vampire film that was contemporary, rather than a period piece. Up to that time, there hadn’t been a successful one and the genre had lapsed into parody. With Fright Night, he gave vampires just the right jolt of bloodlust needed to bring the undead back from the… Read more

Honestly, all of Fantasia is an enormous delight. Consisting of eight animated segments set to an arrangement of classical music, it’s a beautiful experiment in the evolution of animation. The penultimate segment, Night on Bald Mountain, is the real delicacy here. Ovelooking a small village, an ominous mountain comes to life in the form of… Read more

William Castle, though not a great filmmaker by any means, was a consummate showman. Many of his films relied on some sort of gimmick to augment the movie experience. In the case of House on Haunted Hill, a trick called “Emergo” was used, nothing more than a skeleton floating above the audience during the climax.… Read more

More like Oliver Stone’s Dracula, so infused is it with his frenetic cinematic stylings. This umpteenth adaptation of the horror classic hews closer to Bram Stoker’s novel than any previous version, though that’s not to say it doesn’t take its liberties. It is also a madhouse of editing and camera trickery. Yet that’s precisely its… Read more

Such a rare, rare treat it is that a truly chilling ghost story can be found that eschews lurid and fatuous shocks in favor of unexpected frights and unnerving ambience. Set in post-World War II Jersey, off the coast of Normandy, the film follows war-abandoned mother Grace Stewart and her two children, who apparently suffer… Read more

The perfect Halloween family film. Frightening enough to scare the kids, funny enough to amuse the adults and clever enough to entertain everyone. The motion capture technique does a fine job of emulating natural human movement, but the characters are rendered as cartoon caricatures so the effect is less creepy than in the pioneer motion… Read more

James Whale creates a fantastic blueprint for all future haunted house movies. Though it crackles with his offbeat humor, it is more nuanced than in his overpraised Bride of Frankenstein. Ernest Thesiger is more shrewd here as Horace Femm, the browbeaten brother of the eccentric Femm family, and Eva Moore is wonderfully odious as pious… Read more

Though not technically part of the Universal monster movie canon, this release became the catalyst for the studio to launch its long-running classic horror series. Already a legend by the time this movie was made, Lon Chaney decisively dominates this silent horror gem. Well-known from The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a maestro of make-up,… Read more

By most accounts, including mine, Van Helsing is a terrible movie. Overlong, cacophonous, and riddled with cut-rate CGI, as well as chaotic editing and cinematography. Yet it’s also kind of fun. The performances are over-the-top ridiculous. Richard Roxburgh is clearly having a ball as the cartoonish Count Dracula. Read more