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there was also one called The Phantom Lover…the only ones from the series that still exist are the fall of the house of usher and one called open door, which I don’t remember; so Lost Hearts [or that version of it] only exists in my memory
The beginning of Lost Hearts with the children waving to the young lad in the carriage on his way to the ‘big house’ is splendidly eerie, and from then on the tale just gets more and more unpleasantly under-worldly
The most gruesome of the stories though perhaps lacking the dark ambiguity of the others i.e. what the hell was that all about?
Pagan tales for those who choose to celebrate the Winter Solstice
I can only remember the scratching and the temple , but can’t piece together the rest..am I right in thinking that the ghost children saved the boy? Watching a lot of Guillermo del Toros’ films these days, so fascinated by the way people use children in scary films, mainly because frightening things are happening around them that would freak out an adult but they just accept it as normal…can’t wait to see what he does with The Hobbit.
Yep, the wicked uncle was about to remove the heart of his drugged lil’ nephew when he himself was stabbed in the heart by the heart-less long-nailed ones, appropriately enough
Keep an eye on the late-night BBC4 schedules over Christmas
The scariest ten minutes I’ve ever spent in front of a TV was watching the third segment of this little forgotten gem.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073820
Has anyone seen it?
Made for TV in 1975 and starring seventies skyscraper-haired siren Karen Black, “Trilogy of Terror” is genuinely venerated by gorehounds everywhere wherever the topic of scary films comes up. That’s if they’ve been lucky enough to see it.
I remember watching it after MOTD one Saturday night with the family around the fire. It follows a portmanteau format popular at the time(three stories with a framing sequence), and each segment told a stand-alone tale each starring Karen.
The first two segments are fairly unmemorable and a lot of people at the time were known to reach for the off button halfway through – unluckily missing the unbelievable third piece of the jigsaw.
The third piece is called “Prey” and in it, Karen plays a New York divorcee who buys a miniature aboriginal warrior doll as a present from an antiques store. In the opening scenes set in her posh Manhattan apartment, she is waxing lyrical about the doll on the phone. She’s well proud of her purchase.
Legend has it that the doll will come to life if a lock and chain around his belly is removed, she says. She laughs uproariously. As if that’s true! Naturally, she removes the lock and chain from the doll, as you do…
Even my Dad, a tough old buzzard if there ever was one, was reaching for the cushions after the first couple of minutes and the neighbours could hear all five of us scream the house down.
What a ride!!
You can pick it up on e-bay, but I don’t fancy it. It’s worth more to me as a memory. But I do recommend it…except, perhaps, to Moe.
think I’d be ok with that..it’s only things I can relate to that scare me..I’m fine with Alien because I know that I’ll never be in a space ship; The Omega Man with Charlton Heston however stopped me going out after dark for about 15 years [haven’t seen the latest version of it]..what freaks me out is when I’m babysitting my grandson and you get the white noise from the baby monitor…by about 12 o’clock I’m beginning to think what if I hear something that doesn’t sound like a baby..would I run up to his room or run out of the house screaming? I was babysitting many years ago in a rather spooky old cottage and suddenly I heard someone talking in the bedroom..turned out to be the clock radio [remember them?] there had been a power cut and it had turned itself on..in my youth I lived in a very old manor house in Cornwall that was supposed to be haunted and I was ok with that as well. can scare myself as much as I like now because everyone and the dog are coming back tonight! aboriginal man reminds me of someone, however…..
Agree that during my lifetime the Evil Dead has always been the benchmark but with the introduction of better special effects and the like, films such as Saw and Hostel would make it look very dated and not particularly scary nowadays.
One film that did make me squirm quite recently is the Descent, given there are monsters running around which sort of add to the film but also sort of detract from it but it’s the whole; being attacked / chased while trapped underground on a caving expedition that gets to you.
There’s also a few jumpy moments that should, IMHO carry a "If you’re about to take a swig of your Stella, hold fire for ten seconds" warning.
Just a thought.
Lee
P.S Just remembered the film that frightened me most as a young un: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – hands down.
That child catcher with the net absolutely scared the shite out of me.
the bit at the very end in the car was the worst bit in the Descent..I never saw part of the middle because everyone had gone away again and I was watching it on my own..my partner won’t watch The Green Mile even though I keep telling him it’s one of the best films ever.
I watched a film many years ago which had ollie reed in it,i think it was called the shuttered room,very creepy& unerving
Saw is a fantastic horror film – original, clever and a decent storyline that actually has a degree of depth.
It’s gory in places, but not just for the sake of it. Unlike Hostel, which can only be desribed as ‘torture porn’.
The sequals are not as clever, but the story evolves satisfactorily.
Apart from ‘Halloween’ for obvoius reasons, an old film called ‘Black Christmas’ ruined me for a few years to be honest…
You see, there’s something unbelievably terrifying about the thought of being alone in a big house, late at night and hearing noises in an unexplored attic…The phone rings and you are instructed by the police that you should quietly GET THE F*** OUT OF THE HOUSE AS QUICK AS YOU CAN….
It’s just horrifying
Halloween – what a classic!! Don’t watch the remake – pure shite.
Michael Myers (no, not him, but Austin Powers is quite scary) can be shot, stabbed, run over and break a man’s neck with a simple flick of the wrist, but he still can’t beat-up Jamie Lee Curtis!!
Also, how can a man who clearly isn’t that mobile keep up with teenagers running for their lives?
Better than Jason, but Freddy is still the man!
Somehow, I think if I was old enough to appreciate how fit Jamie Lee Curtis was at the time, Halloween wouldn’t have been as scary. The first Nightmare on Elm St was the last film to give me the creeps though and I watched that after school on my own in broad daylight!. The body bag in the school corridor bit was as far as I got before pressing ‘stop’ and breaking into song, as you did
unless you like gore…
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