About a year ago I bought a pack of 50 classic horror movies. We're talking older than my mother here. They're all black and white and the sound isn't the best since they haven't really been remastered (or maybe that's due to my shitty speakers on my tv). There are some definite gems though.
Like White Zombie where Bela Lugosi plays a voodoo master who resurrects the dead to transform them into labourers. A man falls in love with a woman who is about to be married to another man so he enlists the help of the voodoo master to kill the woman and bring her back to life as his own love. Of course things don't work out the way he wants them to. I'm so used to watching zombie movies where the dead chase the living and try to eat their flesh but there is none of that in White Zombie. Just monotonous drones. And of course Bela Lugosi is a treat!
Little Shop of Horrors is another great! It's about a plant shop where one young man finds a new breed of plant. Half venus fly trap half something else, the plant turns out to be more of a handful than the young man had hoped for! After finding the plant has a taste for human blood, he must keep his talking plant happy. This movie has been remade countless times, and even once into a musical! See if you can name the uber-famous actor who appeared in the original in the clip below.
Some other wicked movies in the pack:
Nosferatu
(hey-o creepy!)
The Phantom of the Opera
(need some sleep?)
Night of the Living Dead
(my personal favourite)
One of the coolest things about watching these old horror movies is seeing the differences in technology. When these movies were made the actors, directors, make-up artists etc., had minimal supplies to work with. They made due with what they had. They didn't have CGI and other helpful tools we use for movies now. Yet they still seem to make the movies just as terrifying (if not more so) as the movies today.
Even the difference between what was scary then and what is scary now is astounding. Most movies need gore and blood to make an audience scared. But not back then. The way the movies make you use your imagination to fill in the missing holes (the way someone would look if they fell off a cliff) is so much scarier than showing you what would actually happen.
I'm slowly making my way through them all...I'll get there eventually!
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