How I Learned To Love Being Scared - Page 6

I don’t recall seeing any of the films shown over the next couple of weeks, although my younger brother Andrew (now old enough to stay up as well) has fond memories of the giant bunny movie Night of the Lepus (1972).

Then came The Bat (1959), a murder mystery starring Vincent Price, and the Legend of the Werewolf (1974) that had Peter Cushing hunting the fanged killer. Apart from Price, there’s nothing much to recommend with The Bat, although it’s a perfectly serviceable murder mystery.

Werewolves must be cinema’s most tragic monsters and that’s true again in Legend of the Werewolf. Peter Cushing is a coroner, a latter day Gil Grissom, if you will, trying to solve a series of brutal murders. The trail leads to a memorable conclusion in the Parisian sewers. By this time, the werewolf was my monster of choice, and while this is no classic, it did make a lasting impression on me.

It was another fanged encounter that provided the next stand-out moment and the final film that year. As a werewolf nut, I’d watch even a bad movie so long as it featured one and The Beast Must Die (1974) definitely qualifies as a bad movie. A horror, blacksploitation, whodunit film, complete with mini werewolf break before the killer is revealed, it’s stupid but fun, particularly if you’re 15-years-old and eager for another furry fix.

Somewhere around this time, my older brother Tony became a big influence on my development as an aficionado of the macabre. He introduced me to the early works of writers like Stephen King and James Herbert, as well as taking me to see my first X film at the cinema. The X was the equivalent of the current U.K. 18 rating and no one below that age was supposed to be allowed in. Well, I was only 15, but on the large side, and things were a lot less strict back then so I didn’t have a problem. The film was Friday the 13th and it showed how far horror had progressed from the films I’d been watching on TV, particularly in the effects department.

You might think reading and watching more modern horror would have put me off the old classics, but when the "Horror Double Bill" started in July 1981, I was right there on the sofa ready.

That year, it was Val Lewton in the spotlight. I Walked With A Zombie (1943), Cat People (1942), The Seventh Victim (1943), Isle of the Dead (1945), Bedlam (1946), The Leopard Man (1943), The Curse of the Cat People (1944), and The Body Snatcher (1945) were all shown over the coming weeks. These well-made films were a lot more adult in tone than the old Universal monster movies, but some of them at least had one thing in common, the presence of Boris Karloff (and in The Body Snatcher, Bela Lugosi, too).

Article Author: Ian Woolstencroft

Ian Woolstencroft was brought up on a diet of John Wayne movies and Marvel Comics and still has a passion for both. Now as a blogcritic he finally understands what Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben meant when he said ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ …

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