Five Favorite Directors: Classic Horror

Even people who don't care for classic horror movies have probably heard of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Vincent Price, but behind every horror classic there's also a director asking for heavier fog, more menacing closeups, and louder screams. Alfred Hitchcock, although not primarily a horror director, might be the most familiar to modern viewers thanks to Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963), and more recent masters of the genre include George Romero, John Carpenter, and Wes Craven, but my personal favorites tend to be the earlier icons whose work influenced everyone after them. Most of the films from these directors are light on gore and heavy on atmosphere, which is how I like my creepy midnight thrills, and many worthy contenders aren't listed here only because I limit myself to five. These are the directors I most often turn to when I want something spooky to send a shiver down my cinematic spine.

Tod Browning

Browning is best remembered today for two horror classics, Dracula (1931) and Freaks (1932), but his directorial career started with silent shorts in 1915, and he helmed a number of notable silent horror pictures before his date with Dracula. Browning's movies with Lon Chaney, "the man of a thousand faces" and a master of silent horror, are especially good; try The Unholy Three (1925), The Unknown (1927), and West of Zanzibar (1928) for a sense of Browning's work before Dracula.

James Whale

Like Browning, James Whale is best remembered today for his iconic Universal monster movies, including Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933), and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Whale's work combines the usual elements of horror with a very dark sense of humor that sometimes tips right over into black comedy, especially with Claude Rains in the lead role for The Invisible Man. In between these more famous films Whale also directed The Old Dark House (1932), a wonderful spooky house picture with his usual flair for mixing giggles with screams.

Jacques Tourneur

As the son of French director Maurice Tourneur, Jacques Tourneur grew up in the movie making business in both France and the US; his career really took off when he teamed up with RKO horror boss Val Lewton for films like Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Leopard Man (1943). Later Tourneur would make memorable pictures in a number of genres, but he returned to horror for Night of the Demon (1957) and The Comedy of Terrors (1963). Cat People is justly celebrated today for its moody ambience and loaded subtext, but I'm also very fond of I Walked with a Zombie for its imaginative revision of Jane Eyre.

Robert Wise

Like Tourneur, Robert Wise enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with Val Lewton early in his career, even though he later became more famous as the Oscar-winning director of musicals like West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). His work in horror remains an important part of his oeuvre and the genre as a whole, with early Lewton projects like The Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Body Snatcher (1945) laying the foundation for the horror masterpiece, The Haunting (1963), which is so good that it alone justifies Wise's place in this list. Watch it with the lights out and the sound turned up, and you won't sleep a wink.

Roger Corman

Roger Corman directed more than 50 movies, many of them low-budget shockers and now cult classics, and Corman has lived long enough to see himself become a true Hollywood legend. As much as I enjoy a really ridiculous B-movie romp like Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), my favorite Corman horror films are the Poe adaptations he made with Vincent Price, some of them more faithful than others but all of them very entertaining. House of Usher (1960) kicked off the series, but two later entries, The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964) are probably my top picks for being less campy and more evocative of Edgar Allan Poe's works than a picture like The Raven (1963), even though that one is also a lot of fun.

Looking for even more classic horror directors? Try F.W. Murnau, Mario Bava, Mark Robson, and Terence Fisher for additional thrills and chills. 

See also: "The Kiss That is the Kill: Sex and Death in Three Classic Vampire Movies"

Five Favorite Films: Val Lewton

I wouldn't normally think about making a five favorite films list for a producer, but Val Lewton is special. Born Vladimir Leventon in what is now Ukraine, Lewton headed the horror unit for RKO in the 1940s and made brilliant, moody horror pictures on shoestring budgets. He eschewed gimmicks and gore in favor of subtext and atmosphere, even when the titles assigned to him to make films out of suggested conventional B horror fare. Lewton worked with his writers and directors throughout the making of his horror films, giving his productions a distinct character that can be seen in all five of the films listed below. Don't be afraid to give Lewton a try if you're not into blood and guts; these are smart, delightfully creepy pictures that let your imagination do most of the work.

Cat People (1942)

The most famous of Lewton's pictures and arguably the best, Cat People features direction by Jacques Tourneur and a terrific performance from Simone Simon, who stars as the Serbian bride of a bland American engineer (Kent Smith). The couple can't consummate the marriage because Irena fears that doing so will transform her into a murderous cat, but the strain on the relationship also threatens to drive her to extremes. Female monsters are rare in classic horror, which makes Irena even more important, as she struggles with many of the same fears and doubts that plague Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) in The Wolf Man (1941).

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Tourneur also directs this dreamy post-colonial revision of Jane Eyre, which stars Frances Dee as a Canadian nurse who travels to the West Indies to care for the comatose wife of a plantation manager (Paul Holland). Local rumors say that the wife has been turned into a zombie, which sets Nurse Betsy on a quest to find out the truth about her patient and cure her if possible. Important supporting performers include the calypso musician Sir Lancelot and Edith Barrett as the manager's mother. This one is a must for fans of the many Jane Eyre inspired movies that followed the success of Rebecca in 1940.

The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

Tasked with crafting a sequel to the successful original, Lewton instead produced this completely different story about a lonely little girl (Ann Carter) and her "imaginary" friend, using the love triangle from the original as the setup for the adult characters. Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) is still a bland stick but has replaced the dead Irena with more conventional wife Alice (Jane Randolph), and they don't know what to make of their sad, misfit daughter, Amy. Only the ghostly Irena (Simone Simon) brings the child company and comfort, but Irena might not be able to help Amy against the paranoid threat posed by a kindly neighbor's mentally unstable daughter. Robert Wise, who was brought in to finish the picture, earned his first directing credit for this film.

The Body Snatcher (1945)

Wise is also the director for this adaptation of a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson, which features horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi as well as Henry Daniell as a doctor who benefits from the infamous corpse stealing trade of 19th-century Edinburgh. The story capitalizes on the notoriety of the Burke and Hare crimes of the period and provides a truly menacing role for Karloff as Cabman John Gray, the body snatcher of the title. Karloff would end up getting some of his best roles in Lewton pictures and was perfectly suited for the more intellectual, artistic brand of horror that the producer specialized in making.

Bedlam (1946) 

This original story about the infamous 18th-century London madhouse is a personal favorite; Lewton got the idea from William Hogarth's Bedlam scene in The Rake's Progress and even stages a shot to recreate the image. Anna Lee stars as feisty comic actress Nell Bowen, who makes enemies of the wrong people and is thus falsely identified as a madwoman and locked up in Bedlam, where the villainous keeper (Boris Karloff) grossly abuses his authority. Mark Robson directs this unabashedly artsy period piece, which might not appeal to everyone but hits all the right buttons for those familiar with Hogarth's prints and the history of the notorious asylum.   

For even more films from Val Lewton, check out The Leopard Man (1943), The Seventh Victim (1943), and Isle of the Dead (1945). Lewton might have made more great films but died tragically young of a heart attack in 1951, at the age of 46.

See also: "Hogarthian Gothic: Imagining the Madhouse in Val Lewton's Bedlam"

Classic Films in Focus: THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944)

Ostensibly a sequel to the 1942 horror classic, Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People (1944) is in reality a completely different kind of tale. It's not really a horror movie and not really a sequel to the original film, even though it brings back most of the characters from the earlier outing and carries over some of their concerns. RKO producer Val Lewton, along with directors Gunther V. Fritsch and Robert Wise, engage in cinematic sorcery to weave this sad, sweet story out of the leftover bits of a psychosexual nightmare, but there are still some moments of terror to be found, especially in the sinister performance of Elizabeth Russell as a daughter scorned to the brink of madness.

Ann Carter plays our young protagonist, Amy Reed, whose loneliness and dreamy ways frustrate her father, Oliver (Kent Smith), largely because of his obsession with normalcy after the tragic death of his strange first wife, Irena (Simone Simon). Amy's mother, Alice (Jane Randolph), also worries about Irena's legacy, which she thinks of as a curse visited on Amy, but both parents are counseled by Amy's teacher (Eve March) to have more patience with their only child. Longing for friends, Amy visits an eccentric old lady, Mrs. Farren (Julia Dean), but she also begins to see the kindly ghost of Irena, who comforts her when she feels most rejected and alone. When Amy follows Irena into a winter storm, she encounters real peril, especially when her arrival at Mrs. Farren's house leads to tragedy.

RKO wanted a sequel to Cat People to cash in on the low-budget horror's success, but as always Val Lewton had something different in mind. Instead of another story of sexual repression and bestial transformation, The Curse of the Cat People offers a ghostly fairy tale that delves into the psychology of children and their imaginary friends. Amy is a sad Alice wandering through a dismal Wonderland, where adults make little sense with their contradictory commands to believe and not believe what they tell her. Rejected by other children and keenly aware of her failure to be the child her father expects, Amy feels drawn toward Irena, who becomes a friendly playmate and confidante. We never know for sure if Irena is real or imaginary; she tells Amy things that suggest knowledge that Amy couldn't possibly have, but the ambiguity is typical of Lewton's best films.

Whether she's a cat woman, an imaginary friend, or a sympathetic ghost, Irena is never the source of terror in this story. The most frightening characters are Mrs. Farren and her daughter, Barbara (Elizabeth Russell), who make for a Gothic duo of feminine domestic dysfunction. Mrs. Farren likes Amy, but she's clearly mad, fashioned in the Miss Havisham mold in her creepy Victorian home. Russell, who had appeared briefly as a fellow Serbian cat woman in Cat People, here has a larger and more tragic role as the daughter whom Mrs. Farren rejects as an impostor, claiming that her real daughter died years ago. Jealous of Amy and driven to the edge of insanity by her isolation and suffering, Barbara swears she will murder the little girl for usurping Mrs. Farren's affection. Ironically, Barbara serves mostly as a foil for Amy, showing the consequences of parental rejection and neglect. Unless Oliver and Alice change their ways, Amy might become as damaged as Barbara, even if Barbara doesn't kill her. The ending underlines the ways in which Irena, Amy, and Barbara are all connected, and if it doesn't put a lump in your throat you haven't been paying attention.

Oddly enough, The Curse of the Cat People is also a Christmas movie, and it hints at Lewton's deeply literate sense of story with its references to Irving's Sleepy Hollow and the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson. For more of Lewton's eerie best, see I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Leopard Man (1943), and Bedlam (1946). Ann Carter's other work as a child actor includes The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) and Song of Love (1947), but she made her final film appearance at the tender age of 16. Look for the bewitching Simone Simon in The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) and La Ronde (1950), and see Kent Smith in The Spiral Staircase (1945) and The Damned Don't Cry (1950). If you want more classic horror with Elizabeth Russell, try The Corpse Vanishes (1942) and Weird Woman (1944); she also has an uncredited role as a ghost in The Uninvited (1944).

Classic Movie Haunted Houses for Halloween

Last week we spent a few days in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where, at the insistence of my teenage daughter, we visited a commercial haunted house. It's called Mysterious Mansion, but there's nothing very mysterious about it. Visitors pay $16 a pop for 15 minutes of being jumped at and chased around by people in weird makeup and masks. There was the obligatory scary clown, some girls covered in fake blood, and a guy in a Grim Reaper outfit wearing jeans under his robes. My daughter had a good time, but for the adults the most entertaining part was watching a teen girl in the group ahead of us totally lose it and bail a third of the way through the house. The rest was just darkness, narrow spaces, and some irritating strobe lights. The underwhelming experience left me thinking about my favorite haunted houses in classic movies and why they're so much better than these attractions that pop up all over the place come Halloween.

For me, a good haunted house movie has several elements. One is atmosphere that I'm given time to appreciate. Another is a compelling narrative that explains the supernatural phenomena and creates a reason to care about the characters (including, ideally, the dead ones). I like weird effects more than gore; in fact, I'm not much on seeing anyone's intestines or brains, which is why I don't watch slasher films. I want my haunted house to have ghosts, not psychopaths (but I'll forgive the occasional psychopathic ghost). With those criteria, it's probably no surprise that my top shelf haunted house movie is...


THE HAUNTING (1963)

Robert Wise's neurotically eerie horror classic wins hands down in the Haunted House Hall of Fame. It has everything, including deliriously Gothic atmosphere and a heroine who is going completely off the rails. Who can forget that moving door, an effect so simple and yet so unbelievable when you see it? I think everyone who runs a haunted house ought to be made to watch The Haunting a dozen times first (and don't let them anywhere near the dopey 1999 remake).





THE UNINVITED (1944)

The slow burn of this ghost story might bore some viewers, but for me it's one of the best of the genre, combining elements of classic mystery with its spectral terrors. Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, and Gail Russell star as three people whose fates become entwined with that of a house inhabited by the spirits of the dead.  The Criterion Collection release of this film makes a grand Halloween treat for your plastic pumpkin.







HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959)

OK, so this William Castle classic is not a very serious haunted house movie, but it's just so much fun, and it does offer a couple of great jump scares. That blind housekeeper gets me every time! Besides, Vincent Price and William Castle have to be on this list somewhere. It's just not Halloween without them. This is the go-to pick for a Halloween party where you want to laugh and shriek in equal measure.





DRAGONWYCK (1946)

Speaking of Vincent Price, I love the haunted house atmosphere and his Gothic villain in this supernatural tale, even if the adaptation of Anya Seton's novel has some structural issues. Gene Tierney plays Price's new bride, who only slowly comes to understand the ghostly terrors of her husband's home. This is a good one for Jane Eyre fans in particular; it was part of a wave of creepy Gothic romances that followed the 1940 success of Rebecca.







So, if you're looking for haunted houses this Halloween, I suggest you start with one of these instead of standing in line to hand over your cash for fifteen minutes with scary clowns. These are the movies whose worlds I wish a haunted house would take me through, where ghostly music plays and the things you don't see are a lot more terrifying than the things you do.

Looking for related classic horror posts? Try "The Gothic Influences of Disney's Haunted Mansion" and "The Housekeeper in the Gothic Film Tradition."

Classic Films in Focus: BORN TO KILL (1947)

The illustrious Robert Wise directs Born to Kill (1947), a sharp, smart noir drama that showcases the considerable talents of Claire Trevor as its morally ambivalent protagonist. It's an early foray into the genre for Wise, who would go on to direct The Set-Up (1949) and The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) before moving to Oscar winning projects like West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). Unlike those more famous musicals, Born to Kill allows Wise to explore some truly dark territory, and it provides interesting gender reversals of several noir tropes, with Trevor's character in the sway of Lawrence Tierney's menacing homme fatal. Memorable supporting performances from Walter Slezak, Elisha Cook, Jr., and Esther Howard also make this taut crime story worth seeking out, with Isabel Jewell making a brief but pivotal appearance as the good-time girl whose bad behavior sets the plot in motion.

Claire Trevor stars as the newly divorced Helen, who concludes her stay in Reno by discovering a pair of corpses and then skipping town without informing the police. On the train back to San Francisco, she meets the attractive but overbearing Sam (Lawrence Tierney), who makes overtures to Helen but then rapidly marries her wealthy foster sister, Georgia (Audrey Long). Neither Helen's engagement to Fred (Phillip Terry) nor Sam's marriage can cool their lust for each other, even though Helen begins to suspect that Sam is the murderer who left those bodies behind. Meanwhile, a private detective (Walter Slezak) hired by a friend of the dead woman arrives in San Francisco to investigate Sam's involvement in the crime, and Helen is torn between betraying Sam and keeping his dangerous secrets.

Trevor's Helen takes the place of the usual noir anti-hero; like Walter Neff or Frank Chambers, she has a sliver of conscience to struggle against the dark impulses that dictate her fate. Ironically, of course, one of her few generous actions, that of returning a little dog to its home, leads her to find the bodies and make the far less laudable decision to leave town without telling the police. Helen doesn't want to get involved, but soon she's involved so deeply that she can't get out. She knows perfectly well what kind of man Sam is, but she can't resist him, even after he marries her innocent sister. Tierney's male seducer is more brutal than a classic femme fatale; he's always just a breath away from losing his temper and killing someone, although his friend, Marty (Elisha Cook, Jr.), tries to keep him under control. Noir fans will instantly see the irony of having Cook, so often cast as the unhinged type himself,  play the sane one of the pair, while Tierney is really terrifying in his role, and it's clear that he's the inspiration for the picture's title. Moreover, we understand that Helen is a fool to think she can manage him or even survive her entanglement in this compulsive killer's web.

Cook is probably the most familiar of the supporting players, thanks to his many noir roles, but Born to Kill offers several other performances worth noting. Walter Slezak, sounding just a little sketchy with his Austrian accent, plays the detective, Arnett, a slippery philosopher who might or might not have any morals at the bottom of his corpulent soul. Isabel Jewell vanishes too soon as Laury, the girl whose infidelity first pushes Sam over the edge, but she gives the character enough life to highlight Helen's cold self-interest and Mrs. Kraft's devotion. It's Esther Howard as the older woman who proves the scene-stealer of the picture; as the tragicomic Mrs. Kraft, she's brassy and worn, but probably the most deeply sympathetic character in the whole story. Her confrontation with Cook's murderous Marty turns up the tension to an almost unbearable degree, first by forcing us to watch her walk right into a trap and then by making her fight for her life with desperate courage. She's funny, crass, loyal, and utterly heartbreaking in her grief over Laury's untimely death, a perfect foil to Helen's pitiless refinement.

Be sure to note Tommy Noonan in an uncredited role as the bellboy who knows that Mrs. Kraft cheats at cards and Ellen Corby of The Waltons as one of the household maids. For more of Robert Wise's films from the 1940s, try The Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Body Snatcher (1945), both made under the oversight of horror maestro Val Lewton. Claire Trevor won a much-deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Key Largo (1948), but you'll also find her in Stagecoach (1939), Murder, My Sweet (1944), and Raw Deal (1948). Lawrence Tierney plays bad guys like the title outlaw in Dillinger (1945) and Jesse James in Badman's Territory (1946) and Best of the Badmen (1951). Don't miss Walter Slezak in the Hitchcock thriller, Lifeboat (1944), in which he puts that accent to especially unnerving use. Esther Howard turns up regularly in Preston Sturges comedies, as well as Murder, My Sweet and Champion (1949). You might recognize Isabel Jewell from her role as Emmy Slattery in Gone with the Wind (1939), but she also appears in Marked Woman (1937), Lost Horizon (1937), and The Leopard Man (1943).

Classic Films in Focus: THE SET-UP (1949)

With Robert Ryan as his punching bag protagonist, director Robert Wise delivers one of film noir’s most staggering blows with The Set-Up (1949), an unsparing revelation of boxing’s dark side and the bloodthirsty nature of the crowd. Playing out in real time, The Set-Up follows Ryan’s veteran boxer through one fateful night in his career, where the violence of his life in the ring is contrasted by the anxious tenderness of his wife. The fight scenes in this movie are justly celebrated for their realism, but the heart of The Set-Up lies in the wrenching performances of Robert Ryan and Audrey Totter, who press upon us the human cost of other people’s business and pleasure.

Ryan plays Bill “Stoker” Thompson, a twenty-year veteran of the ring whose manager (George Tobias) arranges for him to lose a fight without informing Stoker himself. Stoker believes that he can win the match; he pines for the moral support of his wife, Julie (Audrey Totter), but she can no longer bear to see him take a beating before the pitiless mobs of spectators who fill the stands every night. Little does Stoker know that if he wins the fight he will have to face the wrath of the dangerous mobster Little Boy (Alan Baxter) and his vicious thugs.

The camera shows us two sides of the boxing world, reversing our sense of who is the more violent, the fighter or the spectator for whom he fights. The boxers, gathered in their locker room, embody dignity, resignation, and mutual respect. Even a young black boxer is treated as an equal and a brother, while a nervous first-timer receives encouragement from the battle-scarred elders. The crowd, on the other hand, pulses with murderous inhumanity; even those we most expect to show pity have none. A blind man and an old woman scream for blood as lustily as any of their peers; they care nothing for the men whose bodies are broken to provide them with a night’s amusement. As brutal as the actual fight scenes are, they are nothing compared to the monstrous appetite of the insatiable crowd.

Audrey Totter, usually associated with femme fatale roles, delivers one of the best performances of her career as Julie, who remains outside throughout the fight. Julie’s anguish reminds us that the fighters are not only human beings but husbands, lovers, fathers, and sons. Each blow that lands wounds a body loved by someone who becomes another casualty of the bloody sport. Unable to bear witness to another fight, Julie roams the city, her eyes filled with anxious hope and terrible dread. To her the aging boxer is not “Stoker” but Bill, the man she loves too much to endure the gory spectacle of his suffering. Still, she will not be spared; her reunion with Bill in the final moments of the film offers a tender but tragic coda to the cruelty that has come before.

Be sure to appreciate David Clarke in a brief but effective appearance as the battered older boxer, Gunboat Johnson. Robert Wise’s other noir films include Born to Kill (1947), Blood on the Moon (1948), and The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), although he is better remembered today as the Oscar-winning director of West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). See more of Robert Ryan in Crossfire (1947), On Dangerous Ground (1951), and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). Audrey Totter also stars in Lady in the Lake (1947), The Unsuspected (1947), and Tension (1949). Milton R. Krasner, the cinematographer who shot The Set-Up, earned seven Oscar nominations over the course of his career and worked on more than 150 films, including All About Eve (1950), Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), and How the West was Won (1962).

Classic Films in Focus: THE BODY SNATCHER (1945)

Adapted from a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Body Snatcher (1945) is yet another example of producer Val Lewton’s genius for turning out elegant, literate horrors on a shoestring budget. This period tale of grave robbers in 19th-century Scotland benefits from the direction of Lewton protegee Robert Wise and the presence of genre icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, but the psychological effect of The Body Snatcher also hinges on a particularly memorable performance from Henry Daniell as a physician whose Faustian bargain with the resurrection man brings about his own undoing. Like most of the Lewton films for the RKO horror unit, The Body Snatcher eschews gore to revel in suggestion, but there is no shortage of unseen awfulness to stir the dark corners of the viewer’s imagination.

Karloff plays the title character, Cabman Gray, who drives a carriage for hire when he isn’t digging up corpses. Gray’s chief client is Dr. McFarlane (Henry Daniell), who loathes Gray but has too much history with him to escape the body snatcher’s power. When McFarlane takes on medical student Fettes (Russell Wade) as his assistant, he draws the young man into the dark side of Victorian medicine and exposes him to Gray’s machinations. Soon Gray begins providing corpses for McFarlane without waiting for them to die of natural causes, and McFarlane realizes that only one course of action will ever release him from Gray’s relentless grip.

Karloff and Daniell dominate the screen as two men who both hate and need one another, tied together by a past that evokes the lurid history of the notorious real life Edinburgh murderers Burke and Hare. Karloff plays Gray as a smiling villain who uses his friendly, obsequious manner to pacify his victims and disarm his enemies, which makes his outbursts of violence all the more shocking. Early in the film, he brutally kills a faithful little dog guarding its young master’s grave, so we understand the sort of outrageous cruelty of which he is capable. His opposite is Daniell’s McFarlane, mockingly called “Toddy” by Gray, who cannot smile even at those he really cares about, including his housekeeper, Meg (Edith Atwater), who is also secretly his wife. Gray is utterly, even gleefully, evil, while McFarlane is a man whose better nature has been corrupted by his involvement with the body snatcher’s trade.

The rest of the characters serve to react to the two protagonists and their ongoing conflict. Russell Wade, handsome but rather bland as Donald Fettes, must avoid repeating his teacher’s fate, and he also provides a muted romantic subplot with an attractive widow (Rita Corday) who has brought her crippled daughter (Sharyn Moffett) for treatment by Dr. McFarlane. The little girl, Georgina, adds some sentiment to the story with her plight, but she also brings irony in her childish obsession with Gray’s white horse, which otherwise functions as a symbol of death. Edith Atwater plays Meg to great effect, investing her with tragic resignation to the fate of the man she loves. Lugosi, oddly enough, has only a few scenes as Joseph, McFarlane’s servant, but his presence pays off with an opportunity to see him and Karloff together in one memorable, violent meeting.

Be sure to appreciate the beautiful singing voice and chilling fate of Donna Lee as the blind street girl, whose encounter with Gray is a quintessential moment of Lewton horror. For another collaboration between Val Lewton and Robert Wise, see Curse of the Cat People (1944), or try The Haunting (1963) for Wise’s most famous work in the horror genre. Karloff and Lugosi can be found in many Universal horror films both separately and together; see both of them in The Black Cat (1934), The Invisible Ray (1936), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). Career villain Henry Daniell has more memorable roles in The Sea Hawk (1940), The Great Dictator (1940), and Jane Eyre (1943); although not primarily a horror actor, Daniell did return to the genre for several episodes of the Boris Karloff television series, Thriller. For different tales of the resurrection men and their ghastly work, you might try more recent pictures like I Sell the Dead (2008) and Burke and Hare (2010), but it's also a frequent theme in the series of Frankenstein films.

Classic Films in Focus: THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL (1951)

The Maltese Falcon (1941) made San Francisco a true noir town, defined by shadows and fog, and many subsequent films have returned to the city by the bay to take advantage of its seductive yet deadly atmosphere, including, of course, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). Compared with such iconic works, director Robert Wise's The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) is by no means the best or most famous San Francisco noir, but it does make very good use of its title setting. It also features a particularly intriguing plot in which the heroine of the story, like Kim Novak in Vertigo, has some extremely complicated identity issues, but, unlike Novak's dual personalities, Valentina Cortese's protagonist possesses the strength and raw determination of a true survivor.

Cortese plays Victoria Kowelska, who endures years of hardship in Poland during World War II and struggles to survive in a Nazi concentration camp. When her friend, Karin, succumbs to illness and starvation, Victoria assumes Karin's identity in order to gain passage to America, where Karin's aunt and son live. By the time Victoria reaches the United States, the aunt is dead, and little Christopher is being raised by Alan Spender (Richard Basehart), a distant relative who seems to enjoy the wealth and privilege of the aunt's home on Telegraph Hill. Victoria marries Alan for practical reasons, but soon she begins to suspect that Alan's own motives are not very ethical, either, especially since he has an unusually intense relationship with Margaret (Fay Baker), Christopher's governess. Victoria's situation is further complicated by her own burgeoning feelings for Marc (William Lundigan), an acquaintance of Alan's whom Victoria knows from the end of her time in Poland.

The heroine's duplicitous game makes her unusual because she is both sympathetic and self-serving, not a true femme fatale but not an innocent, either. Victoria justifies her actions by reasoning that they cannot hurt her dead friend, and she tries to make up for her deception with her lavish maternal devotion to Karin's child. Still, there's a sense of karmic retribution when Victoria gets caught up in the web of lies enveloping Telegraph Hill. She even acknowledges that her predicament is earned in some measure by her own choices. Another difference stems from Victoria's identity as a survivor in the truest sense of the word. We first see her, dirty and gaunt, fighting other women for food in the concentration camp; unlike the real Karin, Victoria is tough, and thus we have faith in her resilience, even when Alan's sinister intentions become shockingly clear. The climactic scene provides a reversal of the famous milk glass sequence in Suspicion (1941) and offers a particularly compelling look at the qualities that set Victoria apart from other noir heroines.

While Cortese is excellent as the leading lady, the rest of the cast vary in the quality of their performances. Richard Basehart plays his slippery part well, and Fay Baker captures the conflicted aspects of the governess with skill, especially near the picture's end. William Lundigan is rather flat as Victoria's straight arrow love interest, but that might be more the fault of the role than the actor. At any rate, he's not particularly memorable here. Gordon Gebert is a little too placidly all-American as Karin's son, Christopher, and one gets the feeling that this movie doesn't really know how to treat him as a character rather than a mere plot device. The use of San Francisco, on the other hand, is consistently good, especially when Victoria tries to steer an out-of-control car down one of the city's famously inclined streets. Wise, who spent his early career under the tutelage of Val Lewton, handles atmosphere beautifully, and the San Francisco setting gives him of plenty of material to develop.

You can see more of Robert Wise's handiwork in The Curse of the Cat People (1944), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and The Haunting (1963), although he's best remembered today for musicals like West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). Catch Richard Basehart in Tension (1949) and La Strada (1954) for a sense of his range as an actor. Italian actress Valentina Cortese earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Day for Night (1973), but you'll also find her in Thieves' Highway (1949) and The Barefoot Contessa (1954). Finally, you might recognize Gordon Gebert for his other childhood roles in Holiday Affair (1949) and The Flame and the Arrow (1950). He also plays young Audie Murphy in the 1955 biopic, To Hell and Back.

Classic Films in Focus: THE HAUNTING (1963)

Shirley Jackson is best known today for her literature anthology standard, "The Lottery," but her 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, is widely regarded as one of the best modern horror stories; the 1963 film adaptation, called simply The Haunting, brings Jackson's eerie tale of fear and psychological collapse onto the big screen. Like Jackson's novel and many classic horror films, The Haunting eschews concrete images of terror in favor of mounting dread and shadowy, unseen threats, and the effect is terrific. Excellent directorial work from Robert Wise and powerhouse performances from the cast combine with the film's masterful source material to make The Haunting a true classic of the genre, sure to please fans of Val Lewton's seminal work in horror and delight those who enjoy the thrills and pleasures of an old-fashioned haunted house.

Julie Harris plays Nell Lance, the emotionally unstable protagonist of this tale of terror, who has recently been liberated from a life of servitude to her bed-ridden mother by the old lady's death. Nell feels both ecstatic and guilty about her mother's demise, but, eager to seize a chance to do something different for once in her life, she signs on to assist in the paranormal research project at Hill House. The team is led by Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson), a man who wants to prove that the supernatural is real and who thinks that dismal Hill House, with its past history of death and disaster, is just the place for his experiment. Also joining the group are the mysterious Theo (Claire Bloom) and Hill House's presumptive heir, Luke (Russ Tamblyn); once gathered, the four characters quickly find themselves experiencing very strange things indeed. Terrible noises erupt in the night, doors open and close by themselves, writing appears on walls, and cold spots chill the air in certain ominous locations. All the while, fragile Nell responds to the house's evil by becoming more and more unhinged.

Robert Wise had learned the art of horror direction under Val Lewton's astute tutelage, and that influence reveals itself very clearly in The Haunting, where shadows and inanimate objects are invested with mind-bending terror through camera angles, timing, and the characters' reactions. We never see anything really scary in Hill House, but the film constantly suggests that something awful lurks just outside our sight. The justly famous scene in which a door bends and warps in response to some supernatural pressure from the other side is an excellent example of Wise's style here. Like Nell and Theo, we pant in anticipation and horror at the idea that whatever is causing the door's mad contortion will come through and get us, but nothing Wise can show us can be as dreadful as our imagination of it. The black and white cinematography lends itself to this sort of shadow play; watch the way light and dark are used throughout the picture to enhance the idea that something unnatural and unseen lives within this house. Every room is full of statues and mirrors, so that no shot escapes from them; faces are everywhere, watching us, moving in the corners of our sight. The cluttered populations of busts and carved figures give the rooms a funereal air, like the house itself is a kind of indoor cemetery.

Wandering through this Gothic atmosphere we get Julie Harris, stiffly defensive by day in her buttoned jackets and pinned up hair, ghostly and girlish by night in a long white gown, loose tresses trailing behind her as she runs barefoot down the dark and menacing halls. Nell is brittle, sensitive, and deeply repressed, just the kind of victim on whom the house can work its spell. Singularly inexperienced in human relationships, Nell pines with schoolgirl passion for the married Markway and recoils prudishly from Theo's lesbian advances, if only because she is terrified by the feelings that Theo's attentions stir up in her. There might be a touch too much voiceover from Nell over the course of the film, but Wise is trying to remind us how much the story depends upon the secret workings of Nell's mind, and with film there's really no other way to do that.

Take time to appreciate Rosalie Crutchley’s delightfully chilling performance as the housekeeper, Mrs. Dudley. Avoid the 1999 remake of the film; it leaves nothing to the imagination and functions more like an amusement park ride than a real horror film. If you like The Haunting, move backwards in time to Wise's films with Val Lewton, including The Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Body Snatcher (1945). For what it's worth, Wise's major films before and after The Haunting were West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). Perhaps it was all that singing and dancing that made him feel just a bit homicidal.

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.