The Brain That Wouldn’t Die

It’s a lovely day, and there you are motoring with your lady on the way back to your laboratory, where you keep hunks of flesh alive, when you get into a nasty wreck that slices her head clean off.

Blue Beard

Blue Beard is a glutton. He likes food and female orifices, in that order, which doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a major thing for the latter in this early 1901 French-film dazzler by Georges Méliès.

The Mummy

Love—or what we call love—produces a lot of lip service, which isn’t a reference to kissing. We proclaim our dedication to another, though in reality—if our typical future behavior is any indication—we might as well be saying, “Fat chance.” Horror films often feature obsession that is billed by the obsessing individual as love in its purest form. This would-be brand of love resembles hate and is in reality about control and ego.

Cash on Demand

For all of Hammer’s reliance on its tried-and-true monsters, the studio did a fair amount of foraying. Hammer horror could take myriad forms beyond the familiar Dracula, Frankenstein, and Mummy pictures.

Silent Night, Bloody Night

No one who made 1972’s Silent Night, Bloody Night had much of a clue what the story was supposed to be, which sounds like a massive impediment, but it’s all good here in what is tantamount to a progression of darkening images and moods spun around the bare bones of an early Christmas slasher with haunted-house elements.

Silent Night, Deadly Night

In theory—well, maybe—one is not supposed to laugh while watching the events of Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) unfold, but damn does this feel cathartic and mirth-inducing.

Black Christmas

There are horror movies in which Christmas is present, as if incidentally, and there are horror movies in which Christmas is the crux.