A History Of Cinematic Ghosts: Part VI – The Innocents. Classic British Chills

On September 13, 2012, In Cult Labs Promotions, Ghosts & Hauntings, Movies, TV, Celebrities, dvd, hauntings, horror, By kyle

MORE ON THE INNOCENTS. CLICK HERE

After the Grand Guignol horror of William Castle’s lurid 13 Ghosts, time to go down a more subtle avenue with the 1961 British horror classic The Innocents.  Based on the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw, this atmospheric slice of haunted gothic is a direct influence on the mood and look of the Nicole Kidman vehicle The Others and its claws are also in any number of other films that use chills and suggestion rather than shock and awe to fray the audiences nerves.

A young governess played by Deborah Kerr becomes convinced the house and grounds of the house where she works are haunted when her two charges start behaving oddly. The Innocents is more in line with a classic round the campfire ghost yarn or the chilling horror plays the BBC used to produce for Christmas in its golden era.

Although not a massive hit with audiences at the time (but then, neither was The Wizard of Oz… Or It’s A Wonderful Life), the film has grown in stature over the years and is now pretty much the benchmark for how to create a faultless haunted house movie. Martin Scorsese rates this film, placing The Innocents on his list of the 11 scariest horror films of all time while Time Out rates it 18th in it’s list of the 100 greatest British films.

Any horror fans and indeed any serious lover of cinema should watch this film and see how many genre rules are nailed down…

Break-out horror movie smash of the year that has been electrifying hardened genre fans and non-horror fans alike, “The Pact” combines the supernatural terrors of “Paranormal Activity” with the tense atmospherics of a serial killer thriller to create a unique, modern-day take on the classic ghost story.


And it’s out on October 1st! Pre-order yours here.

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A History Of Cinematic Ghosts: Part III – The Uninvited

On September 10, 2012, In hauntings, horror, By kyle

Our next stop on this terrifying trip through time looking at the very best ghostly films, is a classic of its era.  Released in 1944 and adapted from a book by Dorothy Macardle, the film has become an early staple of this ghoulish genre. Why, yes, it’s The Uninvited.

The basic premise of the movie involves a brother and sister who fall in love with a beautiful house…with a sinister secret. You guessed it, the house is haunted. Whilst this may sound cliched by today’s standards, The Uninvitied was a groundbreaking movie; a forerunner of these films. For the first time in Hollywood history, the movie depicted ghosts as a supernatural entity to be scared off. Previously, Hollywood had either used phantoms to create comedy as seen with The Ghost Goes West, Bob Hope’s The Cat And The Cannary as well as the Topper movies, or alternatively revealed the ghosts to be nothing more than an elaborate hoax. But for the first time, The Uninvited‘s ghosts were very much real. Maybe a little too real, however as reportedly Paramount was worried what the reaction would be with purely invisible ghosts, so added several short shots of a ghostly outline.

The Uninvited is not only a classic of the genre, but was quite a big budgeted and highly respected movie in the 40s. The cast, for instance, contained such huge stars as Ray Milland (who would later go on to star in Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder) and Donald Crisp for Withering Heights and Lassie fame.

This black and white film may feel slightly dated now, but is full of atmosphere, charm and fear. A very important film in this genre of the invisible dead.

Break-out horror movie smash of the year that has been electrifying hardened genre fans and non-horror fans alike, “The Pact” combines the supernatural terrors of “Paranormal Activity” with the tense atmospherics of a serial killer thriller to create a unique, modern-day take on the classic ghost story.


And it’s out on October 1st! Pre-order yours here.

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