With Halloween fast approaching, you might be looking to settle in with a classic scary movie. But horror, whether watched alone or in company, isn’t for everyone. So COLD has put together a list for those looking for a middle ground.
Camp, trashy, schlocky, absurd – welcome to our video-store treasure trove of ‘so-bad-they’re-good’ cult classics. Some of these movies are ludicrous on purpose; some were made on a shoestring budget; some are just plain bad. All of them are better off for it.
By the end of this recommended viewing, you’ll agree that a horror movie only fails if it makes us feel nothing at all.
Strait-Jacket (1964) dir. William Castle
Melodramatic, theatrical and with about four more decapitations than you might expect from a Joan Crawford movie, Strait-Jacket features a murderess who returns home to live with her estranged adult daughter. Crawford screams and shudders her way through the flamboyant leaps of logic the film asks of us, spitting out the improbable dialogue like she’s playing to the cheap seats. But the campiest part, of course, is the suggestion that her character is only 49.
House (1977) dr. Nobuhiko Obayashi
This psychedelic ghost-train ride was influenced by the nightmares of the director’s pre-teen daughter – and it shows. As six teenage girls are devoured by a haunted house, expect disorienting tonal shifts, cartoonish sound effects, confusing transitions and a rock-and-roll soundtrack that seems to be playing by mistake from the other room. But this artifice pushes so hard at the seams of camp that it breaks through to the uncanny, making House a rare example of a horror movie that’s made all the spookier by its shlock.
The Driller Killer (1979) dir. Abel Ferrara
Banned under the UK’s 1984 Video Recording Act as a ‘video nasty’, it might surprise you to hear that The Driller Killer is a slowburn. The meandering script is improvised by a gaggle of new wave misfits as our antihero flits from warehouse party to post-punk gig, periodically deigning to murder drifters with a power drill for no apparent reason. But what the film lacks in all the basic tenets of filmmaking, it makes up for in sheer vibe – so rooted to the too-cool art scene of late ‘70s NYC that at times it feels less like a slasher and more like a documentary.
Vampire’s Kiss (1988)
In Vampire’s Kiss, Nicholas Cage stars as a high-powered publishing executive who believes he is transforming into a vampire. Whilst intended as satire, many scenes involve Cage threatening and harassing women, leaving the audience to wonder what exactly the joke is here. But it’s his career-defining, lunatic performance that elevates this movie from questionable to iconic. Cage’s vampire takes the sex symbol of the rich antihero and tramples all over it, revealing these alluring monsters for what they are: ugly men in false teeth, running around the city and ruining lives.
Cemetery Man (1994) dir. Michele Soavi
Italians love horror, especially when it intersects with romance and sex. Cemetery Man is a good pick if you want a little rom-com with your scares, following a cemetery keeper whose job involves constantly putting the rising dead back in their graves. No one in town seems particularly interested in the problem, leaving him to deal with it alone. Things get much more complicated when he falls in love with a beautiful widow, leading him down a surreal journey of lust and murder.
