Frightening Film Friday

Day 127


Yet another movie-themed blog (what a surprise) and this time it is all about scary, frightening, thrilling movies, which is appropriate for this month, what with Halloween just a few weeks away.

Now I need to confess something: I’m a wimp when it comes to scary movies - I haven’t seen movies like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th or even The Exorcist (I don’t like Satanic movies!) But I have seen my fair share of other kinds of scary movies, although not everyone would find them as scary as a “Freddy” or “Jason” movie. I prefer movies that give you quick jolts and surprises while leaving much to your imagination, rather than having an onslaught of slaughter or a banquet of blood.

Anyway, every Friday this month I’ll be dedicating my blog to some of my favorite frightening films (which I traditionally watch around this time of year) - here’s the first batch:

Gaslight (1944)

* Ingrid Bergman won her first Academy Award for her first-rate performance of a woman living in the late 1800s who finds herself being slowly, methodically driven mad after she and her new husband move into the home of her beloved aunt, a woman who was strangled to death many years before. This movie is very deliberate, well-paced, tense and eerie.

Cape Fear (1962)

* I have never seen the 1991 remake of this film and I don’t intend to, because in my mind nothing could beat the Gregory Peck - Robert Mitchum version. What a duo! Peck is an attorney with a beautiful wife and teenage daughter who is soon terrorized by Mitchum, a man he once testified against (and consequently helped put in prison for several years). Mitchum is out for revenge and plans on taking it out on Peck and his family! I think Mitchum is creepy/scary/pure evil in this movie that always puts me on the edge of my seat!

The Watcher In The Woods (1980)

* This is a good example of a movie that some might not find scary at all, in part because of it being a Disney movie. But for me it still has a few shocks and surprises even after repeated viewings. Bette Davis is a lonely old woman who rents her large house out to a family with two daughters. The eldest daughter, Jan, bears a striking resemblance to Davis’ long-lost daughter, who disappeared one night during a strange teenage séance/ritual in an abandoned church. Jan begins to hear and see things that lead her to believe that she is being contacted from the beyond by the missing daughter.

More frightening films to come next week…