Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)

Freddie Francis' 1965 Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is a first-rate example of a British portmanteau horror film. The film revolves around five men travelling in a train compartment. They make room for a sixth man, Dr. Schrek (Peter Cushing), who can read people's futures through the a deck of tarot cards, which he calls his House of Horrors. One by one, each of the men have their futures foretold, all of which end in death. Of the five tales, my personal favorites are "The Killing Vine," in which a family returns from vacation only to find a truly invasive vine taking over their garden, and "The Disembodied Hand," with Christopher Lee as an art critic terrorized by the severed hand of an artist that he ran over, causing him to lose his rather vengeful hand. Also of note is "The Vampire Story," starring Donald Sutherland as a young doctor who unwittingly marries a beautiful French vampire. The other two stories are, in my book, only mildly entertaining. In "The Werewolf Story," a real estate agent is called back to his family's estate where the current owners have a rather nasty surprise in store for him, and "The Voodoo Story" tells the tale of a jazz musician who rips off an ancient voodoo hymn with disastrous results for himself. But what are truly the best parts of the entire movie are the scenes in the railway coach. There's real atmosphere here. The train is travelling by night, so all you can see out the windows is blackness and smoke. The scenes are claustrophobic. And Peter Cushing plays the evil Dr. Schrek with just the right combination of mildness and menace.

Let me tell you straight up that this is not a great movie. Come to think of it, few horror movies are "great." But some of them are great fun. This is one of those. The casting is unbelievable. Hollywood would pay a fortune to get all of these men back in front of the camera for a second go around. And they play their parts well, each of them starting off jovial and non-chalant, each ending up fearful. The sets are not bad, and the special effects are good considering the time period and the budget. The five short stories are pretty good, even if they have plot holes in them. All in all, this is what I would call a good movie, if I use Roger Ebert's definition, which is that a good movie does what it sets out to do. Dr. Terror's House of Horrors sets out to entertain us and, maybe, give us a tingle. It accomplishes that quite well, and so it is a good movie. Could it have been better? Of course, but the same can be said for many movies. This happens to be the first horror movie I ever saw. I was five years old at the time and living in Germany with my family. My mother and my aunt decided they wanted to see it, so they went and took us kids with them. I was probably scared witless at the time, though I don't really recall. But I did recall the images from the film. They stuck with me for the rest of my life. So much so, that I sought out this film. You could say that it formed the basis for my love of horror films. Not gorefests, but real, old-fashioned horror films. This is just such a movie. Check it out if you're ever in the mood for some good, old-fashioned entertainment.

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is unrated. It's not available on DVD. Hopefully, somebody will restore it and issue it on DVD soon. Until then, you can only get it on fuzzy VHS or through NetFlix.

Dracula (1931)

Dracula! The very name inspires hundreds of images in people's minds, everything from Bela Lugosi to Count Chocula. But with the release of the third movie in the Twilight series, I thought I'd take a look back to where it all started, back to the original Dracula, back to Todd Browning's 1931 masterpiece starring Lugosi as the ancient, blood-thirsty and tragic vampire. And tragic is the concept I want to focus on here, because that is the thing that most of the remakes and knock-offs and other variations of the story always fail to capture. The original 1931 Dracula was a tragedy in that Dracula himself was a truly tragic figure and Browning was sympathetic to his tragic nature. After all, here is a man who is cursed to never see the light of day, a man who lives out a life devoid of friends because friendship with him brings the risk of becoming like him, a man who is despised and hunted because of his difference. It is Dracula's difference - his otherness - that makes him such a tragic figure. It also makes him an early symbol of all the Others who have ever existed in our society, from black Americans to AIDS victims to Muslims. Dracula serves as a metaphor for all of them.

The story is familiar to just about everyone by now. Dracula moves from his crumbling castle in Transylvania to London, where he meets the beautiful Mina (Helen Chandler). He immediately sets about seducing her, to the dismay of her fiance' Jonathan Harker (David Manners) and her father Doctor Seward (Herbert Bunston). Dracula is assisted at times by his minion Renfield (Dwight Frye), a man who has gone insane in Dracula's service. As Mina starts succumbing to Dracula's powers, Seward calls on Dr. Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) for help. Van Helsing immediately recognizes what Dracula is, and casts him out of the house. When Dracula kidnaps Mina, Van Helsing, Harker and Seward pursue him to his castle where they drive a stake through his heart, killing him and releasing Mina from his power.

Of course, this tells you very little about Todd Browning's film. Many younger people may be disappointed by the film, because it doesn't contain a lot of the things we've come to associate with vampire movies. For instance, you won't see any nudity, sex, violence or blood. That's right. In the original film, the only blood seen is when Renfield pokes his finger on a paper clip. Even the slaying of Dracula himself takes place off camera. Instead, Browning relies on atmosphere. There are ancient castles and creepy forests, men in dark suits and women in gossamer night gowns walking zombie-like through misty darkness, cobwebs and shadows, tension and suspense. The sets are elaborate, and the special effects are minimal - there's no CGI morphing, no impossible stunts. The musical score, composed specifically for this movie and performed by the Kronos Quartet, is appropriately melancholic. The acting may seem stiff to people today, but it must be remembered that since talking movies had only been around for four years, movies in 1931 still retained a lot of the staging of silent films. But Lugosi's delivery is perfect as he invites Renfield to "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make."

Modern vampire films may be flashy, sexy, fast-paced, CGI-laden, gore fests, but they still can't compete with the original Dracula. It set the standard by which all subsequent vampire films have been measured ever since. Check it out some time, if you dare.

Dracula is rated G and is available in gloriously restored black and white.