MOVIES
Fright Movies
By Frank Beaver
I asked
a number of my friends and colleagues what their favorite “fright” movies
were. Horror film series like Friday the 13th,
Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream have
had special appeal for youthful audiences because they're
about youngsters trying to survive maniacs-on-the-loose
in familiar settings. What I was interested in
were fright films that not only spooked adults but
also could be considered a level above formulaic slasher
melodramas.
The most frequently mentioned film
was Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and coming
in second was Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
Both are popular classic thrillers played out in isolated
motel/hotel locations. Psycho's effect is such that
no matter how often you watch the film it still unnerves—not
just in the infamous shower scene cut to Bernard Hermann's
brilliant musical score but also in other scenes of
unmatched horror staging, such as the bird's-eye-view
murder of Martin Balsam's character.
A colleague of mine said that Wait
Until Dark had frightened him as much as any other
thriller. The level of fear in this film was triggered
by an ingenious plot complication—the heroine (Audrey
Hepburn) was blind and unable to see the psychotic
villain (Alan Arkin) who was terrorizing her.
Others cited two films, Carrie, the
powerfully imaged story of a teenage misfit with otherworldly
powers of revenge, and Dressed to Kill, an
intense Hitchcock-styled thriller about a psychotic
stalker of women.
A college student in film studies
brought up Peeping Tom, a 1960 British film
that was suppressed by censors for decades. Now highly
acclaimed, this Michael Powell reflexive screen exercise
about scoptophilia (morbid voyeurism) involves a movie
studio technician who films his victims as he murders
them, and then films the crime-scene activity afterwards.
It's a film with lots of Freudian implications, and
it also raises theoretical questions about
the appeal of making and viewing horror films.
And now my own choice: Nicolas Roeg's
Don't Look Now, a 1973 film with Julie Christie and
Donald Sutherland adapted from a Daphne du Maurier
short story. The plot involves a British couple who,
hoping to lessen their grief after the drowning of
their young daughter, move to Venice where Sutherland
is to help restore art works damaged by floodwater.
It's a supernatural tale with unforgettable images that include a photographic slide that begins to bleed and recurring images of a fleeting figure in red who inhabits the canal streets of nighttime Venice. The lure of that recurring image leads to a shocking conclusion.
Don't Look Now is memorable for other
reasons beyond its mood of terror—its unusual time-space
structuring and its aesthetically constructed lovemaking
scene. (As I said, these are fright movies for adults).
Boo!
 Film historian and critic Frank Beaver is professor of film and video studies and professor of communication.
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