Author |
Message |
Tony (Tony) Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110
| Posted on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 09:26 am: | |
I've just bought this - new - off Amazon for a fiver. I saw it in my childhood (it was in the Fear on Friday slot) and loved it. I'd seen nothing like it and it helped make me what I am, whatever that is. It's a cheapy looking dvd and I had fears it would look like this John Ford box set I got recently (so bad I got rid of it immediately). But it's not; it's beautiful. Why I'm posting this is because I really urge you all to see it. One of my top five or so films, there's just nothing like it out there. While I speak, my top five must-watch films for fantasy fans; The Innocents Don't Look Now The Haunting Picnic at Hanging Rock Portrait of Jenny |
Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74
| Posted on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 12:09 pm: | |
Oh dear! Which Ford set? |
Tony (Tony) Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110
| Posted on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 01:06 pm: | |
Um, it had Quiet Man, Stagecoach, the cavalry trilogy on it. The image was SUB old video. Jennie was as old as these but to me looks spotless. It made me sad to read in an Ebert book that Ford is becoming less regarded with time; sad, because I feel in many ways I'm only just discovering him. |
Tony (Tony) Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110
| Posted on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 01:09 pm: | |
This specific set. http://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Wayne-Collection-Stagecoach-Apache/dp/B000J3CSSU/re f=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1247396925&sr=8-3 |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22
| Posted on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 02:56 pm: | |
Know the film you mean having caught it when I was young many years ago and it stuck in my head. Joseph Cotten is in it and it's a romantic/time travel/reincarnation/ghost story with the kind of sentimental but haunting atmosphere old Hollywood fantasies of the 30s & 40s seemed able to conjure up effortlessly? Wouldn't mind seeing that again... |
Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.153.165.64
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 12:59 am: | |
Tony, another one I would rank right up there with The Innocents and The Haunting would be The Uninvited (1944) starring Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey. Delicious, B&W, atmospheric ghost story set in an old english manor house on the coast. The ghost effects, I thought, were spectacular for the time. With a great twist ending to boot ! One not to miss. |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 01:19 am: | |
Another remarkably subtle and dreamlike Hollywood ghost story from the 40s is Val Lewton's 'Curse Of The Cat People'. A truly beautiful piece of cinema that firmly belongs on your list. Actually any of Lewton's productions belong there but the above is the finest for me... |
Huw (Huw) Username: Huw
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.191.16
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 06:42 am: | |
I was going to say, the Val Lewton box set could serve as a master class on how to make literate, intelligent, atmospheric horror/fantasy/mystery cinema. Add Tourneur's similarly toned Night of the Demon (which Lewton didn't produce, of course) and it would be even better. |
Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 08:42 am: | |
I recommend consulting the Rewind site before buying DVDs, at any rate online. Here it is on Universal and John Ford: http://www.dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=9360 |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 11:23 am: | |
Huw, 'Night Of The Demon' has always been a contender for my favourite horror film of all time!! It's the 1950s supernatural horror equivalent of 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' for me i.e. one I could watch over and over and over again and still get the same buzz each time! |
Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 11:40 am: | |
Funnily enough, Billy Butler interviewed me on Radio Merseyside a few months ago about Thieving Fear, and we got to talking about our favourite horror film. In both our cases it was Night of the Demon. |
Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.224.216
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 11:48 am: | |
Am I the only one here who thinks the demon in question looks like something from an old fairground attraction - i.e. NOT SCARY? |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 11:50 am: | |
Sublime is the word, Ramsey! |
Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 12:00 pm: | |
I've always found the demon fearsome. |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 12:12 pm: | |
And I've always found the thought of the demon terrifying!! 'Casting The Runes' is my favourite James story as well... though it changes quite often. A few other marvellous short stories that vary the theme of being stalked by something invisible: 'By One, By Two, And By Three' (1913) by Stephen Hall [read in 2nd Pan Horror], 'Footsteps Invisible' (1940) by Robert Arthur [11th Fontana Ghost] & John Wyndham's blackly comic 'Close Behind Him' (1952) [6th Fontana Horror]. Gotta love those old anthologies. |
Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 01:22 pm: | |
Don't forget "How Love Came to Professor Guildea"! |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 01:34 pm: | |
It's in there too... [2nd Fontana Ghost]. Perhaps the greatest story ever written on the theme of "breaking down the sanity of a scientific unbeliever in the supernatural"? Like the flip-side of Le Fanu's 'Green Tea' - visible to him (a religious believer) as a demonic monkey yet invisible to everyone else. I wonder did Hichens intend the story as a kind of response? |
Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 02:21 pm: | |
I remember an old short story where the protagonist is being followed by a set of bloody footprints which keep getting closer and closer but I can't remember who wrote it or where I read it. Does it ring any bells for anyone? |
Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.154
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 02:39 pm: | |
Wow, opinions again. I found NIGHT OF THE DEMON lacked atmosphere. |
Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 03:49 pm: | |
Good Lord. I've always thought of it as one of the most atmospheric horror films ever made, and still do. |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 04:29 pm: | |
Weber, that's 'Close Behind Him' by John Wyndham - as mentioned above. Proto, 'Night Of The Demon' packs more atmosphere and suspense into its length than any other horror film I can think of! If Hitchcock had ever turned his hand to a supernatural horror the result couldn't have been any more effective. I mean the sense of impending doom throughout and the psychological journey Dana Andrew's hard-boiled journalist takes is absolutely riveting!! |
Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.154
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 05:59 pm: | |
I watched it just after I'd watched Jonathan Miller's WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU and thought it paled in comparison in subtlety of character and sense of place. It felt like a fun B movie, but not much more. I'll give it another go if it comes on telly again, though. Maybe I missed something. Any particular scenes I should re-appraise? |
Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.224.216
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 06:42 pm: | |
As films go Night of the Demon is indeed very atmospheric and I quite liked the accompanying noise we hear whenever the demon is about to appear. But the thing itself . . . As always James is deliberately vague - I recall a horrible hopping white thing which conceivably is not much bigger than a dog ("Did he 'ave a dog with 'im, or what?") and that's about it. Same with Whistle - the most effective element in the film is that lonely figure seen on the beach. The intensely frightening scene near the end of the story, where the apparition stands guard between the two beds, arms upraised, is curiously omitted from the film. I think it would have worked very well. |
Tony (Tony) Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 07:09 pm: | |
How could I forget Curse of the Cat People? It's one of the most pure and dreamlike films ever, and another top-fiver. God, my mind. Oh - another favourite; Ghost and Mrs Muir. It might sound twee and sentimental but it'll rattle your soul. I quite like Night of the Demon but don't know why I don't love it entirely. |
Tony (Tony) Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 07:13 pm: | |
Vagueness always creates fear. Any seen 1972s Daughters of Darkness? I was reading about it in the Penguin book of Horror and it really rates it. |
Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.153.165.64
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 07:40 pm: | |
The only element I would criticise about Night of the Demon would be the fact we are shown the Demon in all its glory within the first few minutes of the film ! Thus destroying the element of surprise from the get go. The fact that we already know what the demon looks like before the main story kicks in works against the film in my view. Don't get me wrong . It's still one of the most atmospheric movies ever made. But i can't help feeling that less would have been more and if our imaginations had been allowed to create the demon the overall effect would have been unbearable ! |
Tony (Tony) Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 07:45 pm: | |
You do know the director was forced to shoot it that way by the studio, don't you? |
Tony (Tony) Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 07:46 pm: | |
And for the record, I LOVE that monster. It looks so grouchy. |
Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.153.165.64
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 07:55 pm: | |
Yes Tony, i was aware of that . But it is the only thing about the film i can complain about ! And i also think the demon design is wonderful. It was one of several iconic horror images i grew up with even before I'd seen the film. |
Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.153.165.64
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 08:10 pm: | |
Just for the record. My favourite B&W genre film has just got to be Tod Brownings Freaks(1932). A revenge horror extravaganza. The fate of the duplicitous Cleopatra is pure EC horror, a full 20 years before those classic horror comics existed. |
Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.224.216
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 08:42 pm: | |
Remembere the one about the horror movie mogul who finds out his special effects man uses actual monsters? His end was a fitting one indeed. |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 10:18 pm: | |
Not sure what film you mean there Hubert? I actually like the scenes with the demon lifting its hapless victims and clawing them to pieces in gory detail. It makes Dana Andrew's scepticism all the more unbearable and Niall MacGinnis's chuckling villain (possibly the best thing in the movie) all the more menacing - he even dresses up as a clown in one memorable scene (though for me they're all memorable). I get the point about the demon not being shown would have created a purer film but perhaps not as exciting a one... maybe in this case the studio got it right??? |
Tony (Tony) Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 10:20 pm: | |
I was happy with the monster being there. Barker showed his monsters. |
Huw (Huw) Username: Huw
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.178.26
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 10:31 pm: | |
I like the demon - he looks a little like Ernest Borgnine from a certain angle. The best scenes of the demon, I think, are the ones in which we see (and hear) it gradually materialising and approaching its victim. |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 10:44 pm: | |
Got another fabulous dreamlike fantasy for you Tony, from the same era: Jean Cocteau's 'La Belle et la Bete' (1946). Dazzlingly beautiful and haunting imagery comparable to 'Curse Of The Cat People' & 'Portrait Of Jennie'. It's the luminous B&W cinematography and chiaroscuro lighting that does it for me! Movies to feast the eyes upon... |
Huw (Huw) Username: Huw
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.178.26
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 10:46 pm: | |
La Belle et la Bete is a wonderful film. |
Tony (Tony) Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110
| Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 11:01 pm: | |
Not seen it since college. I used to always like that tale at school; in no form for me has that magic been captured, not even this one. Maybe due a rewatch. |
Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 89.19.83.234
| Posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 12:49 am: | |
I thought the villain in NotD was straight out of panto. |
Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.22.183
| Posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 10:18 am: | |
"Not sure what film you mean there Hubert?" What was I thinking? I referred to an old EC comic. |
Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74
| Posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 12:03 pm: | |
"I thought the villain in NotD was straight out of panto." I'd say you need to watch it again. He's complex both in the writing (by one of Hitchcock's early screenwriters) and in Niall McGinnis's fine performance. It's probably the horror film I've watched most often in my life, and it never fades for me. |
Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.154
| Posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 01:09 pm: | |
Okay, maybe I wasn't paying it enough attention. I'll certainly give it a another go, then. |
Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 193.113.57.161
| Posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 01:44 pm: | |
Methinks you're playing devils advocate here Proto ! You CANNOT be serious ! (my best McEnroe impression) |
Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.154
| Posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 03:22 pm: | |
Gods, I wish I had the time to make up opinions to defend. |
Craig (Craig) Username: Craig
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.253.43
| Posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 03:56 pm: | |
Another great horror movie with silly-looking monsters? QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. Which is in my top-10 of horror films.... |
Huw (Huw) Username: Huw
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.176.158
| Posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 09:26 pm: | |
Those ant-like creatures gave me nightmares as a child (or, rather, the way one character described them). Part of me would love to see that film remade, but another part of me hopes nobody ever considers it. And Craig - don't even think of nominating Michael Fucking Bay as a potential 'reimaginer'!). |
Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.224.33
| Posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 10:41 pm: | |
It's full of ideas, that's why it is so interesting, never mind the fake skeletons and plasticine 'horned demons'. The final apparition is marvelous - it exudes a real malevolence. |
Huw (Huw) Username: Huw
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.181.86
| Posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 11:11 pm: | |
Exactly, Hubert. And yes, the final apparition fantastic - it's haunted me since childhood. |
Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd
Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.153.165.64
| Posted on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - 12:35 am: | |
Yeah, but it was the scenes which demanded that I use my imagination which were the most memorable for me. The scene where the guy drilling the 'object' sees something which really frightens him. When questioned he says that "it came through the wall right at me, 'orrible it was" Now that has haunted me since childhood ! Even though we know what the aliens looked like later in the film, my imagination is convinced he witnessed something far more terrible. |