The 10 Greatest Horror Visionaries You May Not Know About
Quick. Name eight films by John Carpenter.
Wow. Not bad. Now name the subtitles of each of the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” films.
Good job. Good job. Now name the first three Coffin Joe movies.
… Really? No one?
The horror genre would not be what it is today without the pioneering auteurs listed below. We may all love “Halloween,” but where would John Carpenter be without the enterprising spirit of the put-upon author Val Lewton? “Tales from the Crypt” is one of the finest television shows ever produced and is based on one of the sickest and most enjoyable comics ever written, but I think that great old lurid magazine owes a lot to the hard work and sick imagination of José Mojica Marins. And where would we be without the outre interests of Tod Browning?
The following list is a collection of some of the most vital and enterprising names in the world of horror schlock. Some of these names may be familiar to you. Some may not. Either way, these are ten important men who have changed the world of horror movies, and should be learned by every young horror fan.
N.B. While I encourage comments and lambastations one whom I have left off of this list, I think it should be understood that I’m not going to mention some of the better-known horror icons in the world. John Carpenter, I’ve mentioned. Wes Craven. Dario Argento. William Friedkin. Tobe Hooper. James Whale. Peter Jackson. We know these. Let us delve into the names that either aren’t as well know, or still require closer examination.
1) Mario Bava (1914 – 1980)
Mario Bava is, along with Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, one of the forerunners of that wonderfully schlocky brand of Italian Eurotrash gore films. He made 37 films from 1963 to 1979, which ranged from murder mysteries to sci-fi superspy films (his “Danger: Diabolik” was featured on “Mystery Science Theatre 3000”), but it’s his horror films that he is best known for, and what I like best. There’s something about his style that really grabs me; he makes horror films in exactly the way I like.
When I was in college, I rented Bava’s “Black Sunday” (ostensibly based on a story by Nikolai Gogol), and I was hooked. A woman had a spiked helmet clamped around her face in the first scene. I didn’t need much more. From there it was to his dreamy sci-fi freakout “Planet of the Vampires,” and his infamous “Twitch of the Death Nerve.” His films are wonderfully sick and weird; they feature torture and witches. What’s more, they are Italian, meaning they have that protracted, dubbed, ESL dialogue, that keeps many horror film deliriously on edge.
2) Tod Browning (1880 – 1962)
Yes. We all know “Dracula” (1931). Everyone knows “Dracula.” “Dracula,” Browning, and Bela Lugosi taught the world what vampires looks like, where they live, how they talk. It can even be argued (perhaps) that the 1931 film was even more influential to the vampire genre then Bram Stoker’s original 1897 novel. So perhaps Tod Browning doesn’t need special attention.
But, I think we need to take a closer look at Browning for his seminal 1932 follow-up “Freaks” and how it, essentially, destroyed his career. “Freaks,” you see, was not a mere director-for-hire studio horror cheapie like a lot of the films from the famed Universal stable. It was actually Browning’s passion project that he was allowed to direct after the worldwide success of “Dracula.” Browning was not just a working director, but a man who, like any good Goth that followed him, an obsessive horror fan, who was a big reader of ghost stories, and studier of the occult.
“Freaks” is well-remembered by horror fans the world over, but few appreciate the sacrifice it represents; “Freaks” was a bomb upon its initial release, and Browning was only allowed to direct a few films thereafter (some of which are actually good; be sure to see “The Devil Doll” and “Mark of the Vampire,” which, even though a clear “Dracula” rip-off, is still enjoyable). Gone were the ubiquitous projects of his silent days. “Freaks” is a simultaneously exploitative, horrifying, campy, and twisted film that every horror fan should see. Browning is a director every horror fan should know.
3) William Castle (1914 – 1977)
William Castle was the ultimate Hollywood showman. You know him. If you don’t, you need to. He made some wonderfully humorous and chilling horror films, that were genuinely scary, in a square kind of way. Films like “House on Haunted Hill,” “13 Ghosts,” and his classic “The Tingler” were monster films that played like adolescent versions of Alfred Hitchcock. Suspenseful, melodramatic and unendingly entertaining.
But, and here’s what Castle will always be remembered for, there were Castle’s famous film gimmicks. Castle had already worked as a director-for-hire in Hollywood for about 15 years before he released his famous “Macabre,” which featured the gimmick of a life insurance policy in the lobby. Just in case you died of fright. “The House on Haunted Hill” featured “Emergo,” which has a real-life skeleton floating across the theater. “The Tingler” had, of course, “Percepto:” the famous wired vibrating theater seats to buzz at choice moments throughout the theater. Scream! Scream for your lives! I have decided that, had I a time machine, I would go to the Sermon on the Mount, the first performance of The 1812 Overture, and the premiere of a William Castle film.
Castle had such business acumen and showmanlike wherewithal that he came up with some of the most innovative advertising gimmicks in film history. He represents a lost era of self-salesmanship where a man with brains, gumption, and no small amount of creativity, could force himself into the pop consciousness. Only John Waters has approached the glorious horrific joy of William Castle.
4) Lucio Fulci (1927 – 1996)
You have not seen extreme horror Euroschlock until you’ve seen Lucio Fulci’s 1981 classic “The Beyond.” You have not seen what a zombie movie can be until you’ve seen his 1979 “Zombie” (a.k.a. “Zombi 2”), with it’s famous tag line “WE ARE GOING TO EAT YOU.” “Zombie” was part of a zombie trilogy. Lushly photographed, weirdly acted, and possessed of some of the most effective and disturbing gore effects this side of “Cannibal Holocaust,” Lucio Fulci’s films bore into your mind like a maggot, and lay eggs there.
Working almost exclusively in the horror genre, Fulci was a hard-working, conversational, and friendly man who made scary jokes and told dirty stories. Not all his 56 films are classics, but each one I’ve seen is way, way bloody, very disturbing, and each was a breakthrough in practical effects. Just watch the scene in “The Beyond” where spiders eat a human head. Or the infamous wood shard scene in “Zombie,” where Olga Karlatos gets impaled in the ugliest possible way.
For the cynical teenagers in the world who think that “Saw” is extreme, and the brutally unpeasant remakes of the modern age are actually brutal and extreme, go back and watch a few Fulci films. Learn what real horror is.
5) Frank Henenlotter (b. 1950)
Frank Henenlotter was an NYC kid who spent his youth amongst the grindhouses and horror festivals of 42nd street; his obsession with horror film started early, and he likely worshiped at the alter of William Castle. When he started to make films of his own in the early 1980s, he made a colorful brand of rubbery, super-bloody, and admittedly sick monster films that cannot really be compared to anything. Covered with a patina of grime, possessed of no small amount of camp, and always expressing some really unsavory sexual themes, Henenlotter was not afraid to go to some really sick places – indeed he seemed to have a genuine interest in it.
While his first film, “Basket Case” is known as a schlocky, low-budget classic, I always felt he is defined more by his one-two punch of “Brain Damage” (1988) and “Frankenhooker” (1990). “Brain Damage” was about a milquetoast everyman who falls in with a little black slimy, smooth-talking alien parasite who injects drugs directly into our hero’s brain in exchange for twisted murders. The scene in which the alien forces itself down a woman’s throat in a twisted mirror of fellatio can pretty much encapsulate what Henenlotter is all about.
“Frankenhooker” is a lot more fun, and features a hero who, using a combination of goop, electricity, and tragic longing, resurrects his dead girlfriend using the parts of old prostitutes. It’s a wonderfully funny film with some great looking rubbery flesh effects, and a sense of humor that its markedly of itself.
Henenlotter fell out of filmmaking in 1992, and them triumphantly returned in 2008 with a film called “Bad Biology,” a psychosexual freakout about a pair of people who rape people to death, and the explosive consequences when these two try having sex with one another. One woman has, I think, 16 clitorises. Test your limits. See a Henenlotter film.
6) Lloyd Kaufman (b. 1945)
Make your own damn movie. Lloyd Kaufman was one of the founders of New Jersey’s prolific straight-to-video B-movie house Troma, and is responsible for producing some of the wackiest horror and genre movies to grace video store shelves. “Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD,” “The Toxic Avenger,” “The Class of Nuke ‘Em High,” “Teenage Catgirls in Heat,” “Rabid Grannies,” “Tromeo & Juliet,” “Cannibal! The Musical,” “Killer Condom,” “Monsturd.” The list is endless.
More than merely introducing the world to some wacky, oddball horror films, Lloyd Kaufman actually has a healthy and helpful attitude toward independent filmmaking, as preached in his books. He feels that, rather than trying to get backing from studios (who would, presumably, alter your vision, toss your script, or merely beat down your ego by rejecting you), that you should make your own movie with your own money, expect no payback, and let the film speak for itself. Kaufman feels that, if its striking enough, it will be seen.
But Kaufman is far from being a dull film-school lecturer. He’s a wild, carnival barker, who cackles and jokes through each one of his strange outings. He has a wild grin, a checkered bowtie, and an earnest eagerness to make an ass of himself. Go, Mr. Kaufman. Go.
7) Herschell Gordon Lewis (b. 1929)
Lewis was one of those schlockmeisters who, like Browning and Henenlotter, had a vested interest in the sickness of his films. While each of his films was traditionally “bad,” – they featured bad acting, stretchy conceits, echo-y sound, and bad-looking sets – the best of them had huge amounts of gooey gore that was unseen in films of the time. When a woman got chainsawed in a Lewis film, we got to see real entrails flying into her face. When someone bled, they bled buckets. And when someone went crazy, they went really flipping crazy.
His classics include “Blood Feast,” (1963) about an Egyptian killer who cuts up women, “The Wizard of Gore,” (1970), about a man hypnotist who cut up women by remote (?), and “Two Thousand Maniacs!” about an entire Southern town who cuts u a group of visiting Yanks. He was also responsible for a whole slew of 1960s nudie cuties, and “Monster a-Go Go,” which is, according to the people at “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” the worst movie ever made.
Lewis has been compared to Ed Wood, which is, I think, a little unfair (his films are of better quality and more straightforward in their shock tactics), but is accurate in how passionate he was about his materials. Like Henenlotter, he took some time off filmmaking, only to return in recent years, getting his hands bloody all over again: “Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat” came out in 2002.
8) Val Lewton (1904 – 1951)
Val Lewton (nee Vladimir Leventon) was not a horror guy. He started as a hard working author, landed jobs writing numerous pulp novels, magazine articles, and even porn stories until he finally broke through as a Hollywood screenwriter-for-hire and producer. He was asked to write a film called “The Body Snatcher,” (1945), which led to “Isle of the Dead” the same year. In the early ’40s, Lewton stepped up to producing, and began handling monster films exclusively.
He didn’t want to make horror movies though, feeling they were beneath him. When he produced “I Walked with a Zombie” (1943), he decided to rewrite the Jane Eyre story for zombies. His literary know-how and sophisticated, adult sensibilities must have clashed with the horror film he was expected to make, but he managed to elevate his films, rather than letting them drag him down. He teamed up with french director Jacques Tourneur and made the classics “Cat People” (1942), “The Ghost Ship” (1943), and “Bedlam” (1946).
Here is a man who knew how to make movies. He was a classy man who took his work seriously, even though he didn’t necessarily want to take part. He had a healthy relationshipwith his wife, and made many minor hits. This is a breed of horror film that has fallen by the wayside: the horror film for grown ups.
9) José Mojica Marins, a.k.a. “Coffin Joe” (b. 1936)
Imagine if the Crypt Keeper were a real person, but who dressed well, was a cannibal, but still hosted his own TV show. Even then, you may not picture just how weird and twisted and glorious Coffin Joe is. José Mojica Marins was born in Brazil in 1936, and lived in a movie theater for most of his youth. He always had an affinity for horror films, which was only fertilized by his growing atheism. By the time he started to make movies, he had adopted a TV horror host personality, Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe), complete with long, claw-like fingernails, an undertaker’s top hat, a spooky beard, and a cape. He was the director and star of all his films, and he played the supervillain who would tease, torment and kill his charges, but not before railing against God for not existing.
The Coffin Joe movies are brilliant and lurid and leave you with a hurtful pit in your stomach. They are cheap, but are only the more disturbing for it. Ike Rob Zombie’s films, they derive most of their power from the low-fi shock of the kills. What’s more, you could never tell where Marins ended and Coffin Joe began. How much was a character, and how much was him?
His films got more and more disturbing as time passed as well, stretching even to 2008 with his “Embodiment of Evil.” In interviews he was mellow and playful, sometimes dipping into weirdo territory.
If you can track it down, I encourage you to see his first two films, “At Midnight I will Take Your Soul” (1964), and “This Night I Will Posses Your Corpse” (1967), which features one of the most vivid and Sirk-ian colorful vision of Hell I have seen in any movie. If ever there was a horror icon waiting to be discovered in America, it’s Coffin Joe.
10) Richard Matheson (b. 1926)
Preceding Rod Serling by a few years, Richard Matheson was one of the early master of the twist-ending horror story, having penned classics like I Am Legend, What Dreams May Come, and Button, Button. He’s a calm, hardworking, all American man from New Jersey who has been in the business for decades. He’s the kind of imaginative, old-school film-and-TV men that has more stories to tell than you do, and who can causally write an intriguing story with a flick of his wrist. I saw him in a live interview once (after a screening of “The Incredible Shrinking Man”), and he seemed like such a pragmatic soul. Looking over his résumé, you can see why.
Matheson has written several Poe adaptations, 16 “Twilight Zone” episodes (and the movie), and episode of “Star Trek,” “The Omega Man,” “Duel,” the TV movie of “The Martian Chronicles,” and countless others. I can list few screenwriters who were as prolific, much less as consistently great. To delve into the career of Richard Metheson is to get a capsulized history of American genre entertainment.
Some of his adaptations haven’t worked so well (2009’s “The Box” was a self-indulgent headtrip from Richard Kelly), but everything he touched was a classic, even if it wasn’t. Start in the 1950s, and movie forward. Take the journey. Learn.
Witney Seibold watches a lot of movies, reads a lot of books, and is trying to write with a bunch of friends watching “The Big Lebowski” behind him. He loves horror movies, old books, arcane knowledge, and stupid jokes. He once worked as a professional film critic, and these days, like everyone else with computer access and two opinions to rub together, maintains his own ‘blog, where he reviews films, analyzes classic films, and writes other amusing articles on more trifling things. You can read it here: http://witneyman.wordpress.com
