A Rumination on the Classics of Horror Cinema

FILM MOI
by Robert Dunbar

You see them everywhere. In every syndicated column. Every blog. On every message board. “The Top Ten Tofu Recipes That Changed My Life.” Or “Best 6,147 Books.” It seems we’re all obsessed with lists. Not long ago, I stumbled across a thread about the “most influential movies of all time” or some such, and it got me thinking. Cinema – all art really – has great power. It illuminates. It transforms. For those of us who experience cinema as literature, classics films comprised an introductory education in the genre. What follows is an appreciation of films that helped me understand exactly what I needed to create: my personal version of Most Influential Movies. Be advised, these are examples of vintage cinema, heavy on style and technique – no splatter porn or CGI creatures – because somehow the old black-and-white films have always felt more private, as though watching them alone and late at night transmuted the experience into something utterly … intimate. Some of these films flicker endlessly across my inner screen, forever part of my psyche, informing and inspiring my own work. I feel only gratitude.

Note: The careers of the established icons in the field scarcely require annotation, so I’ve focused on what interests me: obscure literary details and odd facts about the writers. The order of these entries remains utterly idiosyncratic. But perhaps you’ll detect a pattern?

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SÉANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON

1964, Rank Organization
Written and Directed by Bryan Forbes (based on the novel by Mark McShane)
[This script earned Forbes an Edgar Award.]

Cast: Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough

Stanley made few films. (Paddy Chayevsky’s THE GODDESS is the only other I can even recall.) The reason quickly reveals itself: more work would probably have killed her. The compleat method actress, she languishes throughout SÉANCE in a veritable trance of torment, emotionally exhausting to watch. Rumors that the lady plunged into mental collapse after each project seem altogether too plausible, and the thought of her achieving her art at such a cost is humbling. (Perhaps I don’t suffer enough?) Her mesmerizing performance here – as a spiritualist with a homicidal agenda – remains one of the screen’s great horror characterizations. And if the script veers into Edward Albee country toward the end, is that really such a bad thing?