My Four Favorite Haunted Films

Rating: Null/10 (24 July 2013)

THE CONJURING, after a slow start provided an excellent thrill ride. It had evocative music and sound effects, intense acting, and enough lulls, comic or quiet, for breathing space. That said, I nominate four films that defined the genre for me: The original THE THING (from another world) which I saw as a child made me move to the back of the theater. THE HAUNTING had incredible performances, particularly from Julie Harris and Clair Bloom. Filmed with great style and sinister flourish by director Robert Wise, it made a creaking, bulging door, swooshes of chill, a child's frightened whimper behind a wall and the suggestion of a dead hand clutching Julie Harris's into shivering tension. THE INNOCENTS, based on Henry James' own creepy story, THE TURN OF THE SCREW, had Deborah Kerr's incredible acting as an infernal meddler and self-appointed guardian angel. In trying to save two innocent but tainted children she manages to cause a breakdown in the girl and the death of the boy. It has in several brief scenes the best depictions of the living dead I've ever seen. The very real former governess is spine-chilling. Dressed in funereal black and hanging in the reeds, she stares from a distance across a swampy lake at the little girl (but only Deborah Kerr sees her). Finally, the best from a true master, Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO. Starting with Bernard Herrman's incredible score, from deceptive but sinister moodiness to shrieking violins, it builds to an escalating tension. Anthony Perkins--playing a deceptively sweet, stuttering Mama's boy-- gives us creepy duets with Janet Leigh, Martin Balsam, and John Gavin building a sense of foreboding that shoves us all down those cellar stairs to meet the monstrous stuffed matriarchal owl rocking in her chair. And not one Oscar! Shame on the Academy,