If you are one of the multitude of people who don’t care at all for blood, gore, screaming, and monsters from another world, and yet you'd like to keep your movie-watching experiences to be season-appropriate, I suggest you take a look at the five films I've listed below. They each certainly count as members of the Horror genre, and yet they lack that visceral terror that renders some trembling with fear long after the final credits have rolled. That doesn't mean these are bad horror films, some of them are simply old, and others hold more of a comedic or adventurous tone. But to this day, these remain among the best the genre has to offer, and I couldn't recommend them enough.
- The Curse of Frankenstein
With any film adaptation of the original Frankenstein story, the subtleties of the original novel tend to get nixed in favor of clear-cut good and evil. However, the lovely people at Hammer Films decided to take a much different path than their predecessors at Universal by making Baron Frankenstein himself the true villain of the film. Creepy with a touch of camp, with a great performance by Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin) as Baron Frankenstein and a young Christopher Lee decked out as Frankenstein’s monster himself!
This was quite the scandalous film at the time, but it’s doubtful this film out of the 1950s will send you shaking with fright. And yet the image of perfect villainy in Baron Frankenstein, and the creepy overtones in the film still leave a spooky Halloween movie you can enjoy this October.
- The Monster Squad
The film this movie gets the most comparisons with is The Goonies, so that should tell you what you're looking at right off the bat. This film came out of the great kids horror movement of the 1980s that included great pictures like Poltergeist and Gremlins (Both of which would appear on an extended version of this list). AND its from an era where kids were still allowed to be portrayed as jerks and flawed people in movies, so it's a bit grittier than the kids movies most of us grew up with. This movie has Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf-Man, An aquatic Creature, and a Mummy drawn together by Dracula to ensure evil conquers over good forever. Only the Monster Squad can stand in its way.
This might be one of my favorite movies, due to its quirky sense of humor, high sentimentality, and real love of the horror genre. This movie is due for a remake by Platinum Dunes (a company that specializes in destroying old horror franchises by giving them to inexperienced Music Video directors), so check it out soon so you can see why the original is always going to be where it's at.
- The Invisible Man
The original Universal Monster movies are tame from top to bottom, I can't imagine someone our age in the year 2010 who would be stricken with fright at the lumbering Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi's thick Hungarian accent. Before delving into the full Universal Monster experience this October, I had already seen a handful of the pictures, but had not yet seen any of the entries in the Invisible Man series. When I finally got around to them, I was a little taken aback by how much I enjoyed them. The sinking towards madness as the potion took its course, making it impossible to find the cure. The impressive special effects for the era... It is an impressive feature, impeccably acted.
I guarantee this picture won't shake you to your core, but you will enjoy watching it. I would actually highly recommend all of the Invisible Man pictures... The second stars a young Vincent Price whose distinctive voice appears as his character descends into madness. There's an Invisible comedy, and an Invisible Spy picture... Probably the most versatile of all the Monster franchises. But the original is where it all started, and it's still quite the film.
- The Haunting
The Haunting, despite its age, is probably the film on this list most likely to give you goosebumps. It's a calmer sort of tension than you get in modern haunted house stories, which show far too much and leave nothing to the imagination, but it's still undeniably a tense picture with some good frights in it. I still recommend this on the list, because the frights aren't gruesome in any way, but the film will sit with you like any good suspense thriller. The character work in the film is impeccable, and the film still finds itself on many top ten lists for the genre even to this day. This is the haunted house movie that every haunted house movie wishes it could be.
But the best thing it handles is the ambiguity to the threat lurking within the house these paranormal researchers and psychics are exploring... Is the idea of the evil within enough to trigger the emotional imbalances within these characters, or is there something truly wrong with the house? Absolutely a must-see picture.
- Re-Animator
This is probably the most borderline scary film on the list, even considering modern standards, but this effective mixture of comedy and camp with horror make the moments of over-the-top violence hardly as potent they would be in a straight-faced horror film. An adaptation of a H.P. Lovecraft story, this picture is one of the best to come out of the 1980s. The role of Herbert West, the titular Re-Animator, is one of the most phenomenal characters in the history of the horror genre. His depiction will shape your imagined mad scientists for the rest of your life.
But yes, there is some gore in the picture, nothing like modern fare, but some dis-incorporated heads and gruesome imagery, but played in such an over-the-top manner its much in the same way the violence in Kill Bill is too unbelievable to be truly shocking. And its funny. Really funny. One of the unsung classics, having this picture under your belt for recommendations in the future will always do you well.
COMING SOON: Five Gruesome Horror Movies to Watch this Halloween
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