1963 was a good year for horror movies, in fact I'm struggling to thin the selection down, I did my best...ish.
Probably the biggest horror movie of '63 was Alfred Hitchcocks The Birds, starring Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor, based on the Daphne DuMaurier novel of the same name. It may have not been the first "Nature turning on man" film, but it is widely considered one of the best, also one of the best horror movies of all time.
The Godfather of Gore H.G.Lewis released Blood Feast this year as well, it was his first foray into horror after a fairly successful career making "nudie cuties" films, and what a horror movie, the first splatter movie in fact, violence and gore the like of that had never been seen before! The plot revolves round a psychopathic caterer who murders women as a sacrifice to his Egyptian Goddess Ishtar as well as using their body parts to bring about her return.
Toho Studios are better known for the brilliant kaiju movies, Godzilla and the like, but there also produced the odd horror, and Matango (Attack of the Mushroom People) is definitely odd! It's a very good creepy and atmospheric movie, the special effects aren't too shabby either, it's available on Prime as Attack of the Mushroom People and I highly recommend you watch it.
A couple of Mario Bava releases in '63 as well, Black Sabbath a connected trio of stories each one introduced by Boris Karloff, they are as effective and atmospheric as you'd expect from Bava, as is The Whip and the Body in which Christopher Lee plays a particularly nasty sadist who's out for revenge in this Gothic horror.
The ever busy Roger Corman had 3 releases this year, The Raven, a comedy horror about a magician who's turned into a raven and seeks the help of another magician to break the curse, it stars Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Jack Nicholson!
Using the same sets, Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson Corman made The Terror, a Gothic ghost story set in Napoleonic France. Francis Ford Coppola is said to have directed some scenes, though he is uncredited.
The Haunted Palace starred Vincent Price and Lon Chaney Jr. and is credited with being the first movie to use the Lovecraftian lore and Cthulhu mythos.
Talking of Francis Ford Coppola he made his official directorial debut with Dementia 13 an effective psychological horror that was made on a shoestring budget of $22k, this was what was left over from a production that he had just completed with Roger Corman, Coppola wrote the outline of the script in an evening and Corman gave him the go ahead, the rest is history!
No comments:
Post a Comment