October Horror Movie Marathon

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Uninvited (1944)

Ray Milland and his sister, Ruth Hussey, purchase an old house on the Cornish coast and find it to be haunted.

Made as just a filler or B-production, The Uninvited quickly became much more than that with all it's elements coming together to produce a genre classic.

The cinematography is terrific utilising the windswept Cornish cliff tops brilliantly but it's the sound design that truly stands out. We see and practically feel every breeze, and every ghostly noise - especially the sobbing - seems to be in the room with us. The hauntings are brilliantly conceived throughout culminating in a hugely impressive final manifestation at the top of some stairs. There's also a bit of dark humour as Milland in attempting to justify what is happening to sis is really trying to hold back his own terror and convince himself nothing is to be feared at all.

A final mention to the score by Victor Young, whose main theme Stella By Starlight was covered by Miles Davis on his jazz masterpiece Kind of Blue and when Young wrote lyrics to it was recorded by Frank Sinatra among others.

Superb from beginning to end.

[Frankie Teardrop]

NEW YEARS EVIL - You'll have to forgive me, sometimes I hit on the wrong seasonal holiday. 'New Years Evil' is a film I've seen maybe once before and thought was no more than OK - thank goodness for second chances, had a total blast with it this time. To be fair, it delivers less as a slasher movie (light on violence and threat atmospherics) and way more as a Cannon movie (heavy on rampant silliness and unlikely incident). It's about an LA 'New Wave' TV show host who, on new year's eve, is stalked over the phone by a killer who promises one death per US time zone at the stroke of midnight; any one of the male creeps in her life could be a suspect (including her own son, who worries us when he pulls a red stocking over his head and ends up looking more like a dick than a menace). I like any movie that features live band performances from the early eighties, but the almost certainly middle-aged makers and / or backers were a bit tone deaf about punk - most of the line-ups sound like mildly revved hard-rock, so don't get into it expecting to see any Black Flag or whatever. This obtuseness extends to the overall tone, which works if you enjoy yo-yoing between hilarity and intensity; for every ugly-minded kill, there's some arcane ludicrousness involving a piece of playground equipment and a corpse. I can think of films that are more 'Cannon' than 'New Year's Evil', but its barrelling pace and breezy use of nonsense make it a safe bet for ninety mins of cheap thrills.