Category: psycho-sexual thriller

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #125 Sisters 1972

Through Splintered Glass, Darkly: Voyeuristic Shadows, Mirror Twins, the Dance of Identity, Haunted Gazes, and Watching the Obsessive Psyche Unravel in Sisters:

As dusk falls at the drive-in, I can already feel that unique buzz—the anticipation of watching Sisters unfurl on the big outdoor screen or the big screen in my living room.

This is yet another film I’ll be delving deep into, drawn by its blend of Hitchcockian suspense and De Palma’s feverish visual style. What makes this film so darkly compelling to me is how it intertwines the voyeuristic scrutiny that runs through De Palma’s suspenseful narrative, fractured identities, and psychosexual tension and disquiet, sinking us into a relentless atmosphere where every frame teeters between paranoia and revelation.

For me, Sisters isn’t just another suspense thriller; it’s a hypnotic plunge into unsettling obsession, psychological horror, identity, and twisted sibling bonds that have gripped me since my first viewing.

“You know, there are so few people that I have any feeling for. Not just men, you know. Ever since my sister left. We have had such a close bond.” – Danielle Breton

What keeps me coming back is how De Palma masterfully turns the act of watching and psychological unraveling into a disorienting trip, making every split-screen and nervous glance feel intensely personal. Watching the fractured lives of Kidder’s character play out, I can’t help but get sucked into the relentless tension, each revelation and reversal echoing the messy, unresolved questions that make the film impossible to shake off.

Inside De Palma’s reel, obsessions bloom in shadows: A sister cleaved from a sister—one longing, one ebbing, two sisters’ souls stitched with binding that aches and cuts underneath the knife point intimacy.

Brian De Palma’s Sisters (1972) is a master class in suspense, a film that wears its Hitchcockian worship with sly confidence but also pulses with De Palma’s emerging, unmistakable identity.

The surface tricks—split-screens, voyeuristic camera moves, the shrill glory of Bernard Herrmann’s score, immediately evoke the great suspense maestro, but as the narrative coils into psychological horror and social satire, Sisters becomes its own strange animal: a tale of madness, violence, and the unnerving bond of twins, shot through the psyhco- sexual ambiguity and pulpy humor.

De Palma, at this early juncture in his career, was evolving from a director of brash comedies into the architect of stylish thrillers; Sisters marks the first time he plunges totally into the genre. The film’s mood is bleak, jittery, and darkly comic; even the opening credits (with their clinical photographs of embryos and twins) set an uneasy, off-kilter tone. The influence of Hitchcock is overt, especially in the split-screen sequences, voyeuristic motifs, and the air of wrongness that permeates every frame, but De Palma’s signature emerges in the audacious visual flourishes, narrative reversals, and a willingness to let violence erupt with a startling sense of the grotesque.

The acting is anchored by Margot Kidder in a bravura performance as Danielle Breton, a French Canadian model, charming and mysterious but haunted, shimmering between vulnerability and danger. Kidder doubles as Dominique, her psychically tethered twin, capturing the duality with unnerving conviction. Jennifer Salt embodies Grace Collier, a feisty, idealistic reporter whose career aspirations and tenacity draw her into the film’s web of murder and gaslighting; Salt gives Grace both grit and relatability. William Finley is profoundly creepy as Emil Breton, Danielle’s ex-husband and the story’s ambiguous puppet-master, at once menacing and pathetic. Charles Durning’s private investigator, Larch, supplies a bit of world-weary comic relief. The casting, so precisely etched, serves to ground the film’s often feverish style.

Cinematographer Gregory Sandor crafts Sisters with a raw Big Apple grit—shot in New York and Staten Island, the milieu transmits the shabbiness and chaos of early-1970s urban life. The film’s visual inventiveness is relentless: De Palma utilizes split-screens to heighten tension (showing, for example, the cleanup of a crime on one side while police, on the other, bumble through their investigation), and executes long, fluid tracking shots that both echo Hitchcock’s Rope and push the viewer into the maze of deception. Herrmann’s score is its own character, shrieking and brooding with similar aesthetic precision and nuance, a worthy descendant of his work on Psycho and Vertigo.

Psycho-sexual implications slither through every narrative turn. The film is less interested in Freudian diagnoses than in the spectacle of desire and repression splitting along gendered, bodily, and psychic lines. The conjoined twins’ forced separation, Danielle’s oscillation between sexual activity and trauma, Emil’s proprietary control, and Grace’s struggles as a woman in a man’s world all entwine in a dizzying exploration of identity, repression, and violence.

The murder scenes themselves derive a queasy charge from their positioning: groin-stabbings literalize castration anxiety, while the entangled twins interrogate the boundaries of self, sexuality, and madness. Voyeurism is everywhere, from the opening game show (involving hidden cameras and pranks) to Grace’s obsessive surveillance, and even the audience itself is implicated as a spectator of questionable morality.

The plot is a delicious labyrinth, moving with icy precision from set-piece to set-piece. It begins with advertising exec Philip Woode (Lisle Wilson) winning a meal for two on a hidden camera show, where he meets Danielle, the alluring French Canadian model.

“I don’t know what to do, so I just stand there and, uh, I feel very stupid and about, uh, then I said to the photographer—I said something so terrible you can’t even put it in the French movie. But, he deserved that, you know. He’s a—how you say that word? He’s a—he’s a son of a bastard.”?— Danielle Breton

“Son of a bitch.”— Phillip Woode

“Yes, he was that too. Son of a bitch. But I’m not, you know—I’m not like you Americans’ women’s liberation. I don’t, uh, I don’t spend my life to hate the men. I don’t like that. But this man, he have deserve what I tell him.”— Danielle Breton

After dinner, Danielle, nervy and radiant, invites Philip back to her Staten Island apartment; her ex-husband Emil’s jealous intrusion outside is managed by trickery, and Philip and Danielle sleep together. In the morning, Danielle, disturbed and agitated, tells Philip it’s her birthday and that her twin, Dominique, has arrived. Philip runs errands for her: getting her medication (her supply of mysterious red pills is dwindling) and a birthday cake. Meanwhile, ominous hints of Dominique’s bitterness flare up during Danielle’s phone calls to Emil.

Upon Philip’s return, he is savagely stabbed by Dominique, it seems, in a fit of psychotic rage. His desperate attempt to scrawl “help” in his own blood on the window is witnessed by Grace, the tenacious journalist who lives across the courtyard. Grace phones the police; Emil arrives and, with grotesque calm, helps Danielle hide the body in the sofa bed before the authorities arrive. Grace, frustrated by the police’s dismissiveness and coded racism, vows to investigate the murder herself, convinced Danielle is guilty.

“I saw a murder, and I’m going to prove it.” Grace Collier

Grace’s personal investigation quickens: she hires Larch, a private detective, and uncovers a medical file on the Blanchion Twins, conjoined twin girls separated only recently. Dominique, she learns, supposedly died in the operation. Grace trails Danielle and Emil to a bleak mental hospital, running into a sequence of surreal, increasingly nightmarish complications.

At the hospital, Emil manipulates the staff into believing Grace is a delusional new patient named Margaret; she is sedated and left vulnerable. He then drugs Grace and Danielle, plunging Grace into a black-and-white dream-like hallucinatory state. Under Emil’s influence and drugs, she relives elements of Danielle and Dominique’s traumatic past, in which she dreams herself into the role of Dominique, haunted by memories of meshed identity, psychic invasion, and sexual betrayal.

The truth, as revealed in this fever dream, is bleak: Danielle and Dominique, orphaned and conjoined, were separated by Emil, but not before Dominique, jealous, marginalized, and traumatized, lashed out violently, stabbing Danielle in the stomach when Danielle became pregnant by Emil.

The trauma left Danielle barren; Dominique died in the surgery, but lives on as a split personality that emerges at moments of sexual intimacy and stress, producing catastrophic violence.

As tension peaks, Emil attempts to summon “Dominique” from Danielle through sexual manipulation, but is himself murdered, slashed to death in a grisly inversion of the earlier crime’s violence. Emil subjects Grace to hypnotic suggestion, feeding her a false narrative and having her repeat that there was never a murder in Danielle’s apartment.

Grace ultimately awakens, still under the effects of this hypnosis, witnessing Danielle mourning over Emil’s dead body. Danielle/Dominique kills Emil after he pushes her to split into her violent “Dominique” persona.

When questioned by Detective Kelly, Grace, still under Emil’s hypnotic programming, robotically recites the false story that Emil implanted, denying there was ever a murder or that she witnessed anything important.

She is left confused and silenced, unable to tell her story or expose the truth. Grace, drugged and powerless, is left babbling Emil’s scripted denials to police, effectively silenced, robbed of agency, her story discounted, and her memory broken.

Meanwhile, the investigation trails off with Larch following the sofa-bed (with Philip’s body hidden inside) to a rural train station, a bleak final punchline emblematic of the film’s bitter humor and skepticism about authority and truth.

Sisters ends on a note of dark ambiguity worthy of its Hitchcockian heritage. The monstrous, split self remains unpunished; the moral order is not restored; and the final shots leave us awash in doubt, perverse empathy, and suspicion of everything that calls itself “normal.” De Palma’s film is as much a meditation on the impossibility of knowing the other as it is a stylish shocker — a dazzling, disturbing portrait of violence, madness, and the mutilated ties that bind.

#125 down, 25 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

Behind the Velvet Curtain: Unveiling 8 Hidden Gems of 1940s Suspense Cinema

There’s a peculiar melancholy that lingers in the shadows of 1940s suspense cinema—a decade when the world seemed poised on a knife’s edge. The silver screen became a mirror for our deepest anxieties and desires. These films do so much more than simply entertain: they wrap us in a velvet shroud of uncertainty, where every footstep echoes with suspicion. Every silhouette threatens to dissolve into menace. They’re films spun from the fevered minds of visionary directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Jacques Tourneur, whose names became synonymous with the undercurrent of unease and tension, psychological intrigue, and atmospheric storytelling.

When I think about what makes 1940s suspense so compelling, often entering into noir territory, I always end up circling back to Robert Siodmak and Jacques Tourneur. Both directors had such a distinctive touch, but their approaches to tension and atmosphere were uniquely their own.

Robert Siodmak left a significant mark on cinema, blending noir atmosphere with psychological depth. He was a master of shadow and suspense, and you can see his roots in German Expressionism all over his films. He used black-and-white cinematography and urban landscapes not just for style, but to create a mood where darkness and light almost become characters themselves.

His films are packed with high-contrast lighting, inventive camera angles, and a sense of claustrophobia. He sets a mood that wraps the narrative in an airless vise like walls closing steadily around the story, unsettling and persistent.

Siodmak’s Phantom Lady starring Thomas Gomez, Ella Raines, and Franchot Tone.

Siodmak loved intricate, sometimes non-linear narratives—think of how The Killers unfolds through flashbacks, or how Criss Cross twists around on itself with betrayals and doomed romance. His characters are rarely straightforward heroes or villains; instead, they’re flawed, morally ambiguous, and often trapped by fate. Some of his best work includes noir masterpieces like The Killers 1946 and Criss Cross 1949, and suspenseful classics like Phantom Lady 1944 and The Spiral Staircase 1946—with Dorothy McGuire’s Helen navigating the labyrinth of shadows and peril—stand as cornerstones in the canon of suspense cinema, helping to define the genre’s enduring legacy of psychological complexity, visual innovation, and atmospheric dread.

Jacques Tourneur, on the other hand, brought a supernatural and Gothic edge to the genre. He was all about atmosphere and suggestion. He had this gift for making you feel like something terrifying was lurking just out of sight, using shadows, mood, and sound to let your imagination fill in the blanks. In his horror films—like Cat People 1942, I Walked with a Zombie 1943, and The Leopard Man 1943—he cultivates a cinematic spirit where the supernatural is always ambiguous, hovering just beyond the grasp of certainty.

James Bell and Jean Brooks in The Leopard Man 1943.

The sense of “the uncanny” is central: his films obscure any concrete visual cue, leaving us suspended between rational explanation and the possibility of something otherworldly. He rarely showed the threat outright, which somehow made things even more frightening.

Even when he shifted to noir with Out of the Past 1947, he brought that same sense of ambiguity and unease, blending hard-boiled crime with an almost ghostly mood. Tourneur’s camera work was elegant and fluid, and he had a real knack for subtle storytelling, leaving things unsaid, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. His best films (Out of the Past, Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, Night of the Demon) are masterpieces of mood and restraint, proving that sometimes what you don’t see is even more powerful than what you do.

Both directors left a huge mark on suspense and noir, but in very different ways: Siodmak through his brooding, fatalistic cityscapes and tangled plots, and Tourneur through his poetic minimalism and haunting, ambiguous worlds.

Alfred Hitchcock stood at the high point of this thrilling movement— his American debut with Rebecca (1940), followed by Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942), Spellbound (1945), and Notorious (1946). And one of Hitchcock’s most suspenseful works of the 1940s, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), with its chilling portrait of small-town innocence corrupted by Joseph Cotten’s unforgettable Merry Widow killer, Uncle Charlie. Hitchcock’s sensibility helped define the modern suspense film, blending ordinary protagonists, in seemingly ordinary situations, who find themselves mixed up with extraordinary danger.

Teresa Wright in Alfred Hitchcock’s suspense masterpiece Shadow of a Doubt 1943.

These directors dominated the suspense scene with pioneering cinematic techniques that heightened audience anxiety. I always marvel at how Hitchcock could make even the most mundane moments feel loaded with dread—he really knew how to keep us all on edge.

Honestly, I find myself endlessly drawn back to the suspense films of the 1940s—they just have this magnetic pull. Every time I revisit one, there’s that familiar jolt of excitement, like stepping into a world where danger is always just out of sight. The atmosphere is impossible to shake: shadows that seem to conspire, and a sense that every corner hides someone with sinister intentions. There’s something so compelling about watching depraved or nefarious characters weave their schemes while unsuspecting victims edge ever closer to peril. It’s that constant dance between predator and prey, menace and vulnerability, that keeps me hooked and makes these films feel so alive and unnerving. Suspense is painted with a palette of chiaroscuro, their stories flickering between light and shadow, hope and doom.

Fritz Lang was another towering figure. He brought his German Expressionist sensibilities to Hollywood and delivered classics like Man Hunt (1941), Ministry of Fear (1944), Secret Beyond the Door (1947), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945). Lang’s films were marked by shadowy visuals, moral ambiguity, and a deep sense of fatalism.

Laird Cregar in Brahm’s The Lodger 1944.

John Brahm (Hangover Square, 1945; The Lodger, 1944) also contributed iconic suspense films that remain influential. Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich (1940) and later The Third Man (1949) showcased British suspense at its finest, blending espionage with psychological tension. Alongside these luminaries, the decade was rich with directors who worked more quietly or off the beaten path, crafting understated or cult-favorite suspense thrillers. Mark Robson delivered the eerie The Seventh Victim (1943), a film that has grown in reputation for its ambiguous, atmospheric horror.

Carol Reed’s The Third Man starring Orson Welles as Harry Lime.

André De Toth’s Dark Waters (1944) offered a Southern Gothic take on suspense, while Stuart Heisler’s Among the Living (1941) explored madness and mistaken identity in a moody, underseen gem. Delmer Daves’ two superb 1947 gems – Dark Passage (1947), starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall is a suspenseful thriller about a man falsely convicted of his wife’s murder who escapes from prison and goes on the run to prove his innocence, aided by a mysterious woman, and The Red House a psychological mystery starring Edward G. Robinson and Judith Anderson, that centers on a secluded farmhouse, a mysterious red house in the woods, and dark family secrets that gradually come to light.

Joseph H. Lewis’s My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) is another compact, chilling entry, now celebrated for its taut direction and psychological depth. British directors also contributed to the genre’s richness. Norman Lee’s The Door with Seven Locks (1940) is a prime example of the “old dark house” thriller, and Thorold Dickinson’s Gaslight (1940) (the original British version) remains a masterclass in psychological manipulation and dread. There’s also George Cukor’s 1944 version of Gaslight starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), though initially overlooked, is now recognized as a foundational film in both suspense and noir, with its surreal visuals and Kafkaesque atmosphere. Mexican director Roberto Gavaldón contributed with films such as La otra (The Other One 1946), a suspenseful tale of twins, murder, and identity. Starring Dolores del Río, La otra was later remade by Warner Bros. as Dead Ringer (1964) starring Bette Davis.

“A life that should have been but never was! A fate that moved on twisting and tortuous paths!”
– Dolores del Río, La Otra (The Other One)

Charles Boyer and Ingrid-Bergman in George Cukor’s Gaslight 1940.

Italian director Mario Soldati’s Malombra (1942) is a Gothic thriller with psychological suspense, featuring a haunted castle and a woman tormented by the past. Spanish director Edgar Neville stands out as the filmmaker most closely associated with suspense and crime thrillers in 1940s Spain. His film The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (La torre de los siete jorobados 1944) is a prime example—a fantastical mystery that plunges beneath the streets of old Madrid into a hidden world of intrigue, secret societies, and atmospheric menace.

The era’s thrillers-whether set in fog-choked London alleys, rain-soaked American mansions, or the labyrinthine byways of the mind-wove together noir’s bruised romanticism with the Gothic’s haunted longing all left their mark.

To revisit these films is to wander through that gallery of haunted rooms and rain-slicked streets, to step into a hall of mirrors, where every reflection is tinged with longing and every corridor leads deeper into uncertainty. Guided by directors who understood that suspense isn’t just about who did it or how—it’s about why we’re so drawn to the darkness at the edge of the frame. The legacy of 1940s suspense lies not just in its twists and revelations, but in the way these stories taught us to savor tension, to live inside the question, and to find beauty—even solace—suspensce is not just in the twists and revelations but in the way these stories taught us to savor the tension. It’s the melancholy art of not knowing what comes next.

The suspense thrillers of the 1940s were far more than products of their time—they were blueprints for the future, boldly blurring the lines between crime, horror, melodrama, and psychological drama. This willingness to experiment with genre boundaries opened the door to hybrid storytelling and tonal complexity. What makes these films so enduring isn’t just their style, but the way they tapped into the anxieties and shifting social landscape of their era, layering narrative daring with emotional depth and visual invention.

At their heart, these films revolve around recurring themes that resonate as strongly now as they did then. The “innocent-on-the-run” motif—ordinary people ensnared in webs of danger, mistaken identity, or conspiracy—heightened suspense by placing vulnerable protagonists in unfamiliar, often threatening situations, as seen in Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940).

There are recurring tropes of Psychological Manipulation and Gaslighting: Films like Gaslight (1944) explored the theme of psychological abuse and manipulation, often within domestic or romantic relationships. Films that include Hitchcock’s Suspicion 1941, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Dragonwyck 1946, and Douglas Sirk’s Sleep, My Love 1948. These stories delved into the erosion of sanity, the questioning of reality, and the power dynamics between abuser and victim, reflecting broader anxieties and inherent fear about trust and control.

Some stories dealt with Doomed Romance, Paranoia, Conspiracy, and Betrayal—the pursuit of the object of desire and the fatal consequences of passion or unrequited love became a staple theme. Shaped by the looming shadow of war, these stories have a sense of dread and moral ambiguity. At the same time, claustrophobic settings and the motif of “the trap” amplified the tension, both literal and psychological. The shadow of World War II and the emerging Cold War infused thrillers with a sense of paranoia and distrust.

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau 1943.

Films like Rebecca 1940, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau 1943, The Mask of Dimitrios 1944 directed by Jean Negulesco, Hitchcock’s Notorious 1946, and The Stranger (1946), directed by and starring Orson Welles, The Two Mrs. Carrolls 1947 directed by Peter Godfrey. Reed’s The Third Man 1949, like many plots, often revolved around espionage, hidden enemies, and conspiracies, blurring the line between friend and foe and tapping into the era’s fear of infiltration and betrayal.

Moral Ambiguity and the Blurring of Good and Evil: Claustrophobia and the Trap: Many suspense films used confined or oppressive settings- locked rooms, shadowy mansions, fog-bound cities- to create a sense of entrapment. The “structure of the trap” was a key motif, with suspense built around the hero or heroine’s efforts to escape both literal and psychological confinement—Delmer Daves’s The Red House 1947. We also see Psychological Struggle and Internal Conflict: The best thrillers of the era didn’t just pit their characters against external threats, but also explored their inner turmoil. Themes of mental instability, trauma, and existential dread ran through films like Spellbound (1945) and The Spiral Staircase (1946), and Sorry, Wrong Number 1948, directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Barbara Stanwyck, where the real enemy was often within.

Barbara Stanwyck in Anatole Litvak’s Sorry, Wrong Number 1948.

Quite often, there was Patriarchal Control and Vulnerable Women: Many thrillers, especially those with noir or Gothic elements, explored the vulnerability of women in a patriarchal system, highlighting themes of emotional control, manipulation, and the struggle for autonomy, as seen in Gaslight and similar films. Women in Hiding 1940, directed by Richard Thorpe, and Uncle Silas 1947 (released in the U.S. as The Inheritance) starring Jean Simmons. Experiment Perilous 1944 directed by Jacques Tourneur. Starring Hedy Lamarr, it is a Gothic suspense film in which Hedy Lamarr’s character is trapped in a mansion with a controlling, possibly murderous husband. The story revolves around a woman’s struggle to survive and assert her autonomy amid a suffocating, patriarchal household. There was Undercurrent 1946, directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Katharine Hepburn as a new bride who becomes increasingly fearful of her husband’s dark secrets and controlling behavior. The film explores the dangers of male authority and the erasure of female agency within marriage.

Crime, Murder, and the “Whodunit” Puzzle: Many suspense thrillers center on the mystery of a crime, often murder, and the gradual unraveling of clues, red herrings, and secrets. The “whodunit” structure provided a framework for suspense and brought us into the obstacle course and the tension of the mystery.

Olivia de Havilland in a dual role in Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror 1946.

And, of course, we can forget: Psychological and Psycho-Sexual Disturbance. Beneath the shadowy intrigue of 1940s suspense thrillers pulses a current of psychological and psycho-sexual disturbance, where repressed desires, fractured identities, and taboo obsessions drive characters to the brink of madness and violence. This captures both the psychological and the psycho-sexual elements- think of films like The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), directed by Lewis Milestone, Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door 1947, Phantom Lady 1944, Spellbound 1945, The Dark Mirror 1946, and that same year, Hedy Lamarr would become the dark antiheroine in Edge G. Ulmer’s taut, The Strange Woman. Ulmer brought a distinctive, atmospheric touch to this tale of power, desire, and moral ambiguity. Also in 1946, there was John Brahm’s The Locket, where inner turmoil and forbidden impulses are as suspenseful as any external threat.

Noirvember – Freudian Femme Fatales – 1946 : The Dark Mirror (1946) & The Locket (1946) ‘Twisted Inside’

One of the most unforgettable images comes from Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942), where the climactic confrontation atop the Statue of Liberty’s torch delivers a harrowing blend of vertigo and dread. As the real saboteur Norman Lloyd as the villain Frank Fry, clings desperately to the statue’s hand, we’re left breathless, suspended between sky and sea, in a sequence that remains a blueprint for tension in visual suspense.

Norman Lloyd as the villain Frank Fry in Hitchcock’s Saboteur 1942.

One of the most haunting moments in 1940s suspense comes courtesy of Dorothy McGuire as Helen in Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase 1946. There’s a particular sequence that has stayed with me: Helen, mute and utterly alone in the storm-battered mansion, senses the killer closing in. McGuire’s expressive eyes and trembling hands do all the speaking—her fear is so palpable it practically seeps off the screen. As Helen ascends the shadow-soaked spiral staircase, every twist of the banister seems to tighten the grip of dread, the candlelight flickering across her face as if the house itself is conspiring to keep her silent. The camera coils around her, mirroring her mounting panic, while thunder rattles the windows and the killer’s presence presses in from every dark corner. It’s a stroke of genius in Silent Terror: McGuire’s Helen, trapped between floors and fate, becomes the embodiment of vulnerability and resilience, and in that moment, you can’t help but hold your breath right along with her.

For this collection of suspense that lurks off the beaten path, I’m hoping you’ll join me in descending these winding staircases and wander through this particular hall of mirrors, as we honor the spellbinding legacy of 1940s suspense- a genre that, like a half-remembered dream, refuses to fade with the dawn.

Continue reading “Behind the Velvet Curtain: Unveiling 8 Hidden Gems of 1940s Suspense Cinema” →

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #113 Psycho 1960 & The Birds 1963

PSYCHO 1960

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is the psycho-sexual thriller that yanked back the shower curtain on our deepest fears and cinema’s darkest secrets and showed us what real terror looks like. It’s the film that peered through the peephole and exposed the dark heart of the genre.

A film that didn’t just change horror, but rewired the DNA of cinema itself. Adapted from Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel, which itself drew chilling inspiration from the real-life crimes of Ed Gein, a Wisconsin serial killer whose crimes were truly disturbing. Psycho takes the seed of true crime and grows it into a nightmarish meditation on identity, repression, the monstrous potential, and the unsettling truth that real darkness can hide just beneath the surface of everyday life, tucked away within the people we’d usually never think twice about.

Part of Psycho’s enduring power lies in what it withholds—the violence is never explicit, but rather implied, allowing our minds to fill in the blanks with something far more unsettling. It’s a testament to Hitchcock’s mastery that, despite the lack of graphic imagery, the film remains so psychologically intense that many still find it too frightening to watch.

Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane, the Hitchcock blonde who didn’t make it out of the film, is our way into the story. On the run after a really bad decision, she starts out as our anchor, our heroine—until Hitchcock does something unheard of. He pulls the rug out from under us, shatters and subverts all narrative expectations with the infamous shower scene, a sequence so meticulously constructed (78 camera setups, 52 cuts in 45 seconds) that it became an instant cinematic legend that even now we can’t stop talking about it.

Psycho kicks off with Marion Crane making a desperate grab for a new life, stealing $40,000 and hitting the road. A rain-soaked detour leads her to the lonely Bates Motel, where she meets the awkward but oddly charming Norman Bates, who loves glasses of milk and stuffing things that were once breathing.

Norman Bates is a lonely caretaker running a rundown motel, totally warped and pretty much broken by his domineering mother. Hitchcock takes those two intersecting characters and, with Anthony Perkins in the role as Norman, gives us something unforgettable. Through his mesmerizing performance, Perkins brings Norman to life as both deeply sympathetic and seriously one of the film’s and historically, cinema’s most enduring and unsettling figures. A young man whose mind is so fractured that you’re never sure if he’s the victim, the villain, or somehow both at once. Norman Bates is not just a monster; he has become one of the first truly unflinching American psychos and anti-heroes, and you can’t help but be drawn in by how human he really is on the surface.

After a tense dinner and a fateful shower, Marion vanishes, leaving her sister, boyfriend, and a persistent private detective to unravel what happened. As they dig deeper, the secrets of the Bates house come spilling out, revealing a shocking truth about Norman and his “mother” that redefines the meaning of horror.

Janet Leigh brings real vulnerability to Marion, while Vera Miles is all grit and determination as her sister Lila—she’s not letting anything go unsolved. Then there’s John Gavin as Sam Loomis, who’s basically the poster boy for stubborn, all-American macho (and honestly, sometimes he’s about as flexible as a brick wall). Martin Balsam’s detective Arbogast rounds things out with his dogged persistence. Together, this cast grounds the film’s surreal terror in raw, relatable humanity. When Marion vanishes without a trace, Lila, Sam, and Arbogast follow her trail to the Bates Motel. There, a watchful house on the hill hints at secrets far darker than they ever imagined. They uncover the chilling truth behind Marion’s disappearance and the twisted mystery of her tragic fate.

Cinematographer John L. Russell’s stark black-and-white visuals are more than an aesthetic choice—they’re a psychological landscape, channeling German Expressionism and film noir to mirror the splintered landscape of Norman’s identity and the film’s themes of duality and concealment. Shadows slice across faces, mirrors double and distort, and the Bates house looms like a Gothic specter over the isolated Motel, every frame charged with dread and ambiguity.

Bernard Herrmann’s score is the film’s nervous system: those shrieking, stabbing strings in the shower scene are as iconic as the images themselves, turning the amplifier up on the violence and anxiety to an almost unbearable pitch. The music’s relentless tension is inseparable from the film’s atmosphere, setting a new standard for how sound and image can conspire to unsettle our nerves.

Psycho didn’t just push the boundaries of violence—a violence rendered through Hitchcock’s art of suggestion and sexuality on screen—it obliterated them, introducing the world to the slasher film and forever altering the way filmmakers approached suspense, character, and narrative structure. It was the birth of the modern American horror genre.

Hitchcock’s masterpiece is more than the sum of its shocks; it’s a study in the darkness that can fester beneath the most ordinary facades, a film that forces us to confront the monsters within and leaves us, decades later, wary of shower curtains and gives every lonely roadside motel a sinister edge and certainly a fear of All-American males with boyish good looks who might just have their mummified mother’s body eternally presiding over the shadows, in the fruit cellar.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes

THE BIRDS 1963

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) is a film where the ordinary turns apocalyptic, and at its center is Tippi Hedren’s Melanie Daniels—a woman whose arrival in the sleepy coastal town of Bodega Bay seems to unleash not just a flock of birds, but the full, terrifying force of female primacy. Melanie is no shrinking violet; she’s glamorous, independent, and unapologetically assertive, a socialite who crosses boundaries and upends the careful order of the Brenner family. Her presence is magnetic and disruptive, and as she steps into this insular community, the natural world itself seems to recoil and revolt.

The film opens with playful flirtation in a San Francisco pet shop, but as Melanie follows Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) to Bodega Bay, the tone shifts. What begins as a mischievous romantic pursuit quickly spirals into chaos when the birds—first a lone gull, then an unstoppable swarm—begin to attack. The violence escalates: children are beset at a birthday party, the town is terrorized, and the Brenner home becomes a fortress under siege. Hitchcock’s mastery is evident in every frame—the famous schoolyard scene, crows gathering with mathematical menace behind Melanie; the relentless assault in the attic, where she is reduced from poised outsider to battered survivor.

But beneath the surface, The Birds is a study in gendered power and social anxiety. Melanie’s arrival disrupts the fragile balance of the Brenner household: Lydia Brenner (Jessica Tandy), the possessive mother, sees her as a threat to her bond with Mitch; Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), the schoolteacher and Mitch’s former lover, is collateral damage in the struggle for his attention. (It’s very hard for me to see Annie (or Bob Newhart’s Emily Hartley) lying face down with her beautiful eyes pecked out!) As critics and scholars have noted, the birds themselves become avatars of repressed female energy, latent sexuality, and the chaos that erupts when the established order is challenged.

Melanie’s very presence—her boldness, her beauty, her refusal to be cowed—seems to summon the avian apocalypse, as if the town (and nature itself) cannot contain the force she represents. The film never offers a tidy explanation for the attacks, leaving us to grapple with the possibility that the horror is a response to the threat of female autonomy and desire.

The birds, as related to the Harpies of Greek myth, can be seen as expressions pointing to a psychoanalytic and mythological interpretation of Hitchcock’s The Birds. According to Horowitz, the birds in the film can be seen as symbolic manifestations of the Harpies from Greek mythology: female, bird-like creatures associated with sudden violence, punishment, and the embodiment of destructive feminine energy.

The relentless bird attacks are not just random acts of nature, but are deeply connected to the psychological dynamics in the film, specifically, the jealousy and repressed rage of Lydia Brenner, Mitch’s mother. Lydia is threatened by Melanie Daniels’ arrival and her potential to disrupt the family structure. The Harpies, as mythic figures, were known for “snatching” away and exacting retribution, often representing uncontrollable forces of female anger and vengeance. In the context of the film, the birds become an outward expression of Lydia’s internal turmoil and possessiveness, as well as broader anxieties about female power and autonomy. Horowitz situates the bird attacks as both a mythic and psychological phenomenon, linked to the Harpies’ role as agents of chaos and punishment, and to Lydia’s own emotional state, making the violence in The Birds a metaphor for the eruption of suppressed feminine power and resentment within the narrative.

Hitchcock’s technical innovation is everywhere: the seamless blend of live and mechanical birds, the absence of a traditional musical score replaced by electronic soundscapes and silence, the use of long takes and tracking shots to build suspense. The result is a film that feels both immediate and surreal, a waking nightmare where the familiar becomes uncanny and the safe becomes dangerous and lethal.

The Birds stands as a landmark in cinematic history, not just for its groundbreaking special effects and nerve-shredding suspense, but for its willingness to probe the psychological and social undercurrents of fear.

It helped birth the “nature attacks” subgenre, influencing everything from Jaws to Arachnophobia, but its true legacy lies in its ambiguity and its refusal to offer easy answers. The terror, like Melanie herself, is both alluring and unknowable—a force that cannot be domesticated or explained away.

In the end, as the battered survivors drive out of Bodega Bay, flanked by thousands of silent, watchful birds, we are left with a vision of power—feminine, natural, and utterly ungovernable—waiting just beyond the edge of our ordered lives. The Birds is not just a tale of nature gone mad; it is a meditation on the dangers and desires that simmer beneath the surface, and a reminder that what we fear most may be the very thing we cannot control.

Nature’s Fury Blogathon: Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) Melanie Daniels as Metaphor: Wanton With Wings-“What are you? I think you’re the cause of all this, I think you’re evil!”

#113 down, 37 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

 

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #94 THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG 1927/ THE LODGER 1944 & HANGOVER SQUARE 1945

Echoes in the Fog: The Lodger Legend and Its Shadows from Hitchcock to Hangover Square

THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG 1927

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) stands as a watershed moment in both his career and the evolution of the suspense thriller. Though it was his third feature, Hitchcock himself would later call it his “first true film,” and it’s easy to see why: here, the director’s signature obsessions—wrongly accused men, dangerous allure, and the shadow of violence—emerge fully formed, set against a fog-choked London that feels both timeless and distinctly modern.

Drawing from Marie Belloc Lowndes’s 1913 novel and its stage adaptation, the film takes its inspiration from the Jack the Ripper murders, but is less interested in true crime in reality it is more about the feverish paranoia that settles over a city when evil seems to be lurking just out of sight, prowling the streets.

The story itself is deceptively simple: a serial killer known as “The Avenger” is targeting blonde women, sending London into a state of panic. Right in the middle of all this, the mysterious lodger—played by Ivor Novello—shows up and rents a room from the Buntings just as the murders edge closer to home.

Novello is both magnetic and ambiguous; his haunted eyes and secretive ways make him suspicious and yet strangely fascinating, especially to the Buntings’ daughter Daisy (June Tripp).

As Daisy’s policeman boyfriend Joe (Malcolm Keen) gets more jealous and the Buntings’ suspicions grow, the film really tightens the noose of doubt around their lodger, leading to a dramatic sequence of accusation, pursuit, and mob justice before the truth finally comes to light.

Hitchcock’s direction, deeply influenced by the German Expressionist cinema he encountered in Berlin, is on full display. Working with cinematographer Gaetano di Ventimiglia, he floods the film with mist, shadow, and oblique camera angles, creating a visual world where fear and uncertainty seep into every frame.

The film’s look is both expressionist and modern: glass floors allow us to see the lodger’s anxious pacing from below, staircases become vertiginous chasms, and the fog itself seems to swallow up the city. The rhythm of the editing—dynamic, almost musical—heightens the sense of unease, while the absence of spoken dialogue only sharpens Hitchcock’s focus on pure visual storytelling.

The cast brings a strange, almost theatrical intensity to the film. Marie Ault and Arthur Chesney are quietly compelling as the Buntings, their growing fear for Daisy palpable in every gesture. June Tripp’s Daisy is luminous and vulnerable, while Malcolm Keen’s Joe simmers with suspicion. But it’s Novello who dominates, his performance walking a tightrope between innocence and menace. Hitchcock’s own cameo—his first—comes early, a sly touch that would become a trademark. Historically, The Lodger arrived at a moment when British cinema was searching for its own voice, and Hitchcock’s film was immediately recognized as a leap forward. Critics hailed its technical innovation and atmospheric power, and it quickly established Hitchcock as a director of rare vision.

The film’s themes—media-fueled hysteria, the dangers of mob justice, the ambiguity of guilt—feel as relevant today as they did nearly a century ago. What lingers most, though, is the film’s atmosphere: a city shrouded in fog, where every footstep echoes with dread, and where the line between hunter and hunted is never quite clear. The Lodger is not just a story of murder, but of suspicion, desire, and the perilous search for truth in the haunting, murky shadows.

THE LODGER 1944

John Brahm’s 1944 adaptation of The Lodger stands out as one of the most atmospheric and psychologically charged takes on the Jack the Ripper legend, setting the tone for the era’s horror cinema. Drawing once again from Lowndes’s 1913 novel, the film drops us right into a foggy, gaslit London where fear and suspicion seem to hang heavy in the air.

At the center are the Bontings, a respectable couple who are struggling to make ends meet. So they decide to rent a room to the enigmatic Mr. Slade—played by Laird Cregar—a brooding man whose unsettling habits and haunted look, which bears the mark of something dark and dangerous, quickly disturb the household.

Slade, played with mesmerizing intensity by Laird Cregar, is a figure both pitiable and terrifying, his every movement weighted with obsession and barely contained madness.

As the city reels from a series of brutal murders targeting actresses, Slade becomes fixated on the Bontings’ niece Kitty Langley (Merle Oberon), a luminous music-hall performer.

Laird Cregar was a remarkably gifted American actor whose brief career left a lasting impression on classic Hollywood cinema. Known for his commanding presence and expressive performances, Cregar excelled in roles that demanded both menace and vulnerability, bringing a unique depth to villains and tortured souls alike. He rose to prominence with standout performances in films such as I Wake Up Screaming (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), and,  notably, this role as the haunted Mr. Slade in The Lodger, followed by his performance as the tragic composer George Harvey Bone in Hangover Square (1945).

Cregar’s acting was marked by a rare ability to convey complex inner turmoil—his characters often seemed caught between longing and darkness, their emotional conflict visible in every gesture and expression.

Offscreen, Laird Cregar’s life was just as complicated. He was ambitious but also very aware of how his imposing size shaped the roles he was offered, struggling with Hollywood’s expectations of their leading men. This drove him to try a risky crash diet in hopes of landing more romantic parts. Sadly, this decision contributed to his early death at only 31. Privately, his sexuality was something only close friends and colleagues knew about, and his relationships—including a notable romance with actor David Bacon—were often the subject of both gossip and tragedy.

Despite his short life, Laird Cregar’s career was filled with highlights: he was celebrated for his villainous roles, brought unexpected sympathy to his darkest characters, and was praised by contemporaries for his stage work as well as his films. His performances in The Lodger and Hangover Square remain iconic, showcasing a talent that could evoke both fear and pity, and leaving a legacy as one of Hollywood’s most memorable and enigmatic actors.

As Mr. Slade, Cregar’s performance dominates the film, imbuing Slade with a tragic depth. His physical presence—imposing yet oddly vulnerable—makes him an unforgettable figure, whose yes are constantly shifting, moving between longing and menace, as if he’s always caught between wanting and warning at the same time.

The supporting cast brings their own vivid energy: Merle Oberon’s Kitty is both glamorous and sympathetic, while George Sanders, as the suave Inspector Warwick, brings a dry wit and dogged determination to the hunt for the killer. Wonderful character actors, Cedric Hardwicke and Sara Allgood, as the Bontings, ground the film with their blend of domestic warmth and deepening apprehension, their household slowly unraveling under the weight of suspicion.

What really stands out to me about The Lodger is how visually it leans into a moody, noir-inflected style. Lucien Ballard’s cinematography bathes everything in deep shadows and swirling fog, clearly inspired by German Expressionism. The result is a world that feels at once claustrophobic and strangely dreamlike.

Every frame seems alive with narrow alleyways, rain-slicked streets, and dark, shadowy interiors, conjuring a London that feels like it’s on the verge of hysteria.

The camera lingers on faces, hands, and fleeting, telling glances that say more than words, adding to the tension and uncertainty that drive the story forward.

And Hugo Friedhofer’s score? It quietly threads the film with a subtle but undeniable force that adds to the sense of doom, giving The Lodger its lingering, haunted melancholy that hangs over every scene.

Brahm tightly holds the reins—there’s this careful balance between those quiet, psychologically uneasy moments and sudden bursts of violence and panic. Compared to Hitchcock’s silent version, which focused more on suspicion and the threat of mob justice, this film seems to delve deeper into the psychology of its characters, especially Salde, whose twisted motivations are revealed in chilling detail. The story deviates from the novel and its earlier adaptations, but it manages to add a sense of unpredictability and dread. The Lodger isn’t so much a whodunit as it is about consuming shadows of fear and obsession.

The Lodger was released at a time when Hollywood was dealing with all the anxieties that come with war and the lingering shadows of the past. Brahm, a German émigré, brought a distinctly European sensibility to the film, blending that polished Hollywood studio gloss with the moody, intense vibe of 1930s Expressionism. The end result is a film that somehow feels both timeless and completely of its moment—a suspenseful, unsettling meditation on evil, desire, and the darkness that can hide behind even the most respectable facades.

In the end, The Lodger is less a straightforward thriller than a feverish portrait of a city—and a mind—unraveling. With its unforgettable performances, haunting visuals, and lingering sense of unease, it remains a high point of 1940s horror.

There is a memorable line in the 1944 film The Lodger that touches on the paradox of love and hate. Laird Cregar’s character, Mr. Slade, utters:

“To hate a thing and love it too, and to love it so much that you hate it.”

This line is delivered during one of Slade’s intense, confessional moments, revealing the tortured duality at the heart of his character. Slade is speaking to Kitty, who has become both his obsession and his undoing. The quote sums up the film’s central tension—Slade’s simultaneous attraction to and resentment of women, especially those who remind him of his tragic past. It’s a moment that not only deepens our understanding of Slade’s psychological torment but also highlights the film’s exploration of the thin, often blurred line between love and hate.

This duality drives the suspense and emotional complexity of The Lodger, leaving us unsettled by the realization that the two emotions can coexist so fiercely within a single soul and Cregar is masterful at bringing to life the aching duality of a soul at war with itself, embodying both longing and menace with a grace that makes his torment feel hauntingly real. His performance shimmers with the tension of a man forever caught between shadow and light, desire and dread, each emotion reflected in his face like a secret he can never quite escape.

HANGOVER SQUARE 1945

Cregar reignites his role as a tormented soul. Once again, John Brahm returns with Hangover Square (1945), a feverish, noir-soaked descent into madness, obsession, and the perilous intersection of art and violence. Set in Edwardian London, the film follows George Harvey Bone, a gifted composer played with haunting vulnerability and intensity by Laird Cregar. Bone’s life is a study in contrasts: outwardly gentle and unassuming, inwardly tormented by blackouts triggered by discordant sounds—episodes that leave him with no memory and, as we soon learns, a trail of violence in his wake.

The film opens with a jolt: Bone, in a fugue state, murders a shop owner and sets the scene ablaze, then stumbles home, bloodied and bewildered, unable to recall his actions. This pattern of lost time and chilling gloom becomes the film’s pulse as Bone seeks help from Dr. Allan Middleton (George Sanders), a renowned police surgeon and psychological consultant at Scotland Yard.

After committing the murder during one of his amnesiac episodes, George seeks help for his troubling blackouts. He confides in Barbara Chapman, played by Faye Marlowe, who is the supportive and caring daughter of Sir Henry Chapman, a well-known conductor and George Harvey Bone’s mentor, who takes him to see Dr. Middleton.

At the heart of Bone’s unraveling is his infatuation with Netta Longdon, a cunning and ambitious music hall singer brought to life by Linda Darnell. Netta’s beauty and charm mask a ruthless opportunism; she manipulates Bone’s affections, using his talent to advance her own career while stringing him along with false promises.

Cregar’s Bone is desperate, yearning, and increasingly unstable, while Darnell’s Netta is dazzling and cold, her self-interest sharpening every exchange. Faye Marlowe’s Barbara Chapman, the compassionate daughter of Bone’s mentor, offers a gentler counterpoint, her concern for Bone underscoring the tragedy of a man pulled between light and darkness.

Visually, Hangover Square is a vivid illustration of a noir/thriller atmosphere. Cinematographer Joseph LaShelle (Fallen Angel 1945, Road House 1948, Where the Sidewalk Ends 1950, Marty 1955, The Apartment 1960, How the West Was Won 1962) bathes the film in inky shadows and soft, gaslit haze, creating a world that feels both lush and claustrophobic. Brahm’s direction is dynamic and inventive—overhead shots, Dutch angles, and low perspectives lend a sense of instability and tension, mirroring Bone’s fractured psyche. The film’s most striking set pieces—particularly the Guy Fawkes bonfire scene, with masked revelers encircling a towering blaze—are both grandly theatrical and chillingly intimate, the camera swooping and gliding as Bone’s fate closes in around him.

Bernard Herrmann’s score is also integral to the film’s impact, his original piano concerto serving as both a narrative centerpiece and a psychological battleground. The music swells and recedes with Bone’s moods, the climactic concert sequence a brilliant flourish of sound and image: as flames consume the concert hall, Bone plays on, lost in his own creation, the boundaries between art, madness, and destruction dissolving in the inferno.

Hangover Square is rooted in the mood of its time. It starts with Patrick Hamilton’s 1941 novel, but is transformed into a kind of Gothic melodrama that’s full of the era’s anxieties. The Edwardian setting comes alive with all the rich period details—those sumptuous costumes, busy pubs, and clouds of smoke swirling through every scene. But what really sets the film apart is its noir edge, that constant sense of dread and inevitability running underneath it all that defines its style. Cregar’s performance, tragically his last truly, becomes the beating heart of the film. He embodies the duality of a man gifted and doomed. His torment is visible in every gesture, every look, and every move he makes.

In the end, Hangover Square is a story of a soul at war with itself, of love curdled into obsession, and of genius consumed by its own fire.

#94 Down, 56 to go! Your EverLovin Joey formally & affectionately known as MosnterGirl!

 

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #88 The Killer Inside Me 1976

THE KILLER INSIDE ME 1976

STEPHEN KING once said of the novelist Jim Thompson: “He was crazy. He went running into the American subconscious with a blowtorch in one hand and a pistol in the other, screaming his goddamn head off. No one else came close.”

There’s a slow, simmering menace that seeps through every frame of Burt Kennedy’s The Killer Inside Me (1976), an adaptation of Jim Thompson’s notorious 1952 novel. Set against the dusty, sun-bleached backdrop of a small Texas town, the film unspools like a searing confession, drawing us into the mind of Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford—a man whose polite smile and soft-spoken charm mask a churning abyss of violence and madness. Stacy Keach inhabits Lou with a chilling subtlety, his performance a study in contradictions: gentle, almost affable on the surface, but with eyes that flicker with something cold and unreachable. Keach’s Lou is both Keach’s wry narration track, which acts as the unreliable witness, inviting us to see the world through his fractured lens, much like the first-person narration in Jim Thompson’s novel.

Burt Kennedy (The Rounders 1965, Welcome to Hard Times 1967, Support Your Local Sheriff! 1969), a director more often associated with westerns, brings a laconic, washed-out and weathered sensibility to the film, letting the oppressive heat and slow rhythms of small-town life lull you into a false sense of security. The screenplay, adapted by Edward Mann and Robert Chamblee, closely follows Thompson’s original story, retaining the novel’s bleak, first-person perspective and its refusal to offer easy answers or moral clarity. The cinematography by Gerald Hirschfeld (Goodbye, Columbus 1969, Last Summer 1969, Diary of a Mad Housewife 1970, Young Frankenstein 1974) is unhurried and unflashy, capturing the flat, open spaces and the claustrophobic interiors with the same aesthetic nuance. There’s a sense of inevitability to the way the camera lingers on faces, hands, and the slow drip of sweat down a glass—everyday details that become charged with menace and thick with unease.

The story unfolds as Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford, haunted by visions of his abusive childhood at the hands of his mother (played by Julie Adams), is tasked with running Joyce Lakeland (Susan Tyrrell), a local prostitute played by Susan Tyrrell with a raw, wounded sensuality, out of town. Joyce becomes central to the film’s web of blackmail and violence.

What begins as a routine fix for Lou to take care of quickly spirals into a sadomasochistic affair, with Joyce awakening something dark and uncontrollable in Lou. Their scenes together are charged with a dangerous intimacy—Tyrrell’s Joyce is both complicit and terrified, drawn to Lou’s darkness even as she senses its destructive power. The violence that erupts between them is shocking in its suddenness, rendered with a matter-of-fact brutality that refuses to let us look away.

As Lou’s carefully constructed mask begins to crack, the bodies start to pile up: Joyce is beaten to death in a scene that is as pitiless as it is clinical.

Elmer Conway, played by Don Stroud, is the hot-headed and impulsive son of powerful mining magnate Chester Conway (Keenan Wynn). As a prominent figure in the small Montana town, Elmer is entangled in the town’s political and social tensions, particularly those involving labor disputes at his father’s mine, and is romantically involved with Joyce. Elmer’s character embodies the town’s simmering tensions and serves as both a victim of Lou’s sociopathic machinations and a catalyst for the film’s spiral into violence. Don Stroud brings a raw, volatile energy to the role, making Elmer a memorable figure in the film’s grim, neo-noir landscape.

The situation escalates when Joyce and Elmer are drawn into Lou Ford’s deadly schemes. When Joyce is badly beaten (by Lou Ford, though Elmer is initially blamed), Elmer’s emotional volatility is on display—he is protective, jealous, and quick to anger.  Lou manipulates both of them, and during a critical scene, Elmer arrives at Joyce’s house, only to be murdered by Lou, who then attempts to stage the scene as a lovers’ quarrel gone wrong.

Suspicion falls on Johnnie Pappas (Stephen Powers), who is found with marked money that Lou had given him after taking it off of Elmer. Lou is allowed to visit Johnnie in his cell, where he murders him and makes it look like a suicide, further cementing the devious frame-up.

John Dehner plays Sheriff Bob Maples, Lou’s boss and the head lawman in town. Amy Stanton, Lou’s fiancée, is played by Tisha Sterling with a heartbreaking vulnerability, who becomes both a victim and an unwitting accomplice. The investigation that follows is a slow, inexorable tightening of the noose,

Keenan Wynn, with his gruff manner, plays Chester Conway. Chester, a powerful local businessman and Elmer Conway’s father, also falls victim to Lou’s homicidal binge.

The supporting cast—Charles McGraw — plays the steely Howard Hendricks, the county attorney (sometimes referred to as the district attorney) who also becomes increasingly suspicious of Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford as the murders mount. As an investigator and legal authority, Hendricks is dogged and methodical, representing the force of law and reason closing in on Lou’s carefully maintained facade, realizing that something is deeply wrong with Lou Ford, even as the rest of the small Montana town is slow to believe it. McGraw’s character serves as one of Lou’s primary antagonists, persistently probing the inconsistencies and evidence surrounding the violent events in the town, circling ever closer to the truth.

John Carradine-I am a ham! Part 1

John Carradine’s brief appearance in The Killer Inside Me (1976) is a dark wrong-way turn into macabre eccentricity. As psychiatrist Dr. Jason Smith arrives at Lou Ford’s home under the mundane pretense of wanting to buy the house, the encounter quickly turns unsettling.

Carradine’s character, gaunt and scholarly, is met by Lou, lounging in his robe, exuding an eerie calm, who begins to challenge Smith’s psychiatric expertise, citing medical texts and discussing mental illness, citing medical texts with a chilling, almost clinical detachment.

The scene is marked by Lou’s unsettling display of psychological knowledge and control. He assures Dr. Smith that his schizophrenia is under control, but this is offered unprompted, as Smith has not asked about Lou’s mental state.

The encounter is less a confession and more a demonstration of Lou’s manipulative intelligence and his awareness of how he is perceived. Lou uses the conversation to expose his own knowledge and to subtly let Dr. Smith know that he sees through the doctor’s intentions and perhaps even his identity. The scene is laced with dark humor and unease, revealing Lou’s unraveling persona and growing instability, a moment where the mask of normalcy slips just enough to expose the madness underneath, leaving Dr. Smith—and us—unnerved by the polite menace that hangs in the air.

After a few minutes in Lou Ford’s unnervingly casual presence, the lanky Carradine’s Dr. Smith decides he’s had enough psychological chess for one day. With the speed and discretion of a man who’s just realized he’s wandered into the lion’s den, he makes his excuses and beats a hasty retreat—practically leaving a cartoon puff of dust in the doorway as he escapes Lou’s polite but menacing hospitality.

All these characters populate the town with a sense of lived-in authenticity, each performance adding another layer to the film’s oppressive atmosphere.

Key scenes linger in the mind: Lou’s chillingly calm narration as he commits acts of unspeakable violence; the suffocating tension of the police interrogation; the surreal, almost dreamlike quality of the film’s final moments, as Lou’s world collapses in on itself. Throughout, the film maintains a tone of sunlit horror—violence and madness unfolding not in the shadows, but in the bright, pitiless glare of the Montana sun. The score by Andrew Belling is spare and haunting, underscoring the film’s sense of fatalism and doom.

The murder of Amy Stanton, played by the pixie-like Tisha Sterling, is the film’s most brutally sorrowful moment—a scene where horror and heartbreak bleed together beneath the surface calm. Lou Ford, with his mask of gentle affection still in place, invites Amy to elope, promising her a future just out of reach. The room is thick with longing and the hush of midnight hope, but beneath it all, a terrible inevitability pulses. As Amy lets down her guard, trusting the man she loves, Lou’s violence erupts with chilling suddenness. The blows fall with a mechanical cruelty, each one shattering not just flesh but the fragile dream Amy clings to. Sterling’s performance is devastating: her eyes wide with confusion and betrayal, her body curling in on itself, she becomes the embodiment of innocence destroyed by the very person she trusted most. The scene is almost unbearable in its intimacy—a murder not of passion, but of cold, methodical despair, leaving us with the ache of a soul extinguished in silence.

The Killer Inside Me is a film that refuses easy catharsis. It is a journey into the heart of darkness, not as spectacle, but as a quiet, relentless unraveling. Kennedy’s direction, Keach’s mesmerizing performance, and Thompson’s nihilistic vision combine to create a work that is both deeply unsettling and strangely hypnotic—a portrait of evil that is all the more chilling for its calm, measured surface. In the end, it is the ordinariness of Lou Ford, the banality of his evil, that unsettles me most about the film.

from an article – The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw: The Killer Inside Me remake in 2010 —

Casey Affleck grins like a death’s head with the flesh reattached in this noir thriller from British director Michael Winterbottom, which is sickeningly violent but undoubtedly well made. It has been widely condemned for the scenes in which women are brutally assaulted, and for many, this film will be just hardcore misogynist hate-porn with a fancy wrapper, and those who admire it, or tolerate it…

The Killer Inside Me is a particular distillation of male hate, as practised by repulsive and inadequate individuals who have been encouraged to see themselves as essentially decent by virtue of the trappings of authority in which they have wrapped themselves. And Winterbottom is tearing off the mask; like Michael Haneke, he is confronting the audience with the reality of sexual violence and abusive power relations between the sexes that cinema so often glamorises. Here, the movie is saying, here is the denied reality behind every seamy cop show, every sexed-up horror flick, every picturesque Jack the Ripper tourist attraction, every swooning film studies seminar on the Psycho shower scene. Here. This is what we are actually talking about.

#88 Down, 62 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

 

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #69 GOODBYE GEMINI 1970

GOODBYE GEMINI 1970

SPOILER ALERT!

Goodbye Gemini (1970) is a feverish, kaleidoscopic plunge into the dark side of Swinging London, a film that fuses the era’s psychedelic excess with a twisted psycho-sexual horror that still feels transgressive and strange. Directed by Alan Gibson and based on Jenni Hall’s novel Ask Agamemnon, the film is a cult oddity that stands out for its blend of lurid exploitation, pop-art style, and a genuinely disturbing exploration of fractured identity and taboo desire, reflecting some of Gibson’s signature Grand Guignol theatrics.

The first time I saw Goodbye Gemini, I went in with no expectations, lulled by its offbeat, decadent vibe and the peculiar innocence of its twin protagonists-only to find the film’s true horror creeping in almost imperceptibly, until by the finale I was left stunned, my mouth hanging wide open, reeling from the psychic shock of its quietly devastating impact. The film’s artistry lies in how its unsettling atmosphere and twisted themes sneak up on you, transforming what begins as a quirky character study into something far more disturbing and unforgettable.

Gibson directed several notable films and television works, particularly in the horror genre and British television. Some of his key films include Crescendo (1970) Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), all these horror productions showcase his flair for atmospheric and stylish genre filmmaking.

At the center of the story are fraternal twins Jacki (Judy Geeson) and Julian (Martin Potter), whose unnervingly close relationship is the film’s emotional and thematic engine. Arriving in London for a break while their father is abroad, the twins are childlike and insular, clinging to their shared rituals and to Agamemnon, a battered black teddy bear they treat as a confidant and father figure. Their dynamic is immediately off-kilter: Julian, sensitive and increasingly unstable, rationalizes his incestuous fixation on Jacki as a natural extension of their “hive mind,” while Jacki, more grounded but not immune to her brother’s possessive love, floats like a leaf in the breeze between affection and resistance.

Judy Geeson is an accomplished English actress whose career has spanned film, stage, and television since the early 1960s. She made her stage debut as a child and quickly established herself as a versatile and striking presence. She gained international recognition at just 18 for her sensitive performance as Pamela Dare in the classic To Sir, with Love (1967) alongside Sidney Poitier, a role that showcased her fresh-faced charm and emotional depth. I’ve always adored Judy Geeson’s natural British beauty and pixie-like winsomeness- there’s an effortless radiance to her look that’s both enchanting and refreshingly uncontrived, making her presence on screen utterly captivating.

Geeson’s beauty is often described as luminous and quintessentially English. It is marked by her trademark blonde hair and soulful blue eyes with a star-kissed glimmer, which conveys both innocence and depth. With delicate, expressive features, a melodious and distinctly English voice, and a radiant complexion, she possesses a kind of fresh-faced charm that feels at once approachable and ethereal.

On screen, her beauty is never merely ornamental; it’s animated by an intelligence and emotional transparency that draw the viewer in, whether she’s playing a wide-eyed ingénue or a woman confronting darkness. Geeson’s performances are often noted for their authenticity, subtlety, and a certain luminous vulnerability, making her a standout in both horror and drama. Her enduring appeal lies in her ability to convey innocence and complexity, whether as a troubled schoolgirl, a Gothic heroine, or a woman facing extraordinary circumstances.

Judy Geeson became a familiar face in British cinema, starring in films such as Berserk! (1967), 10 Rillington Place (1971), and Brannigan (1975), often playing provocative or complex leads. Geeson’s presence is both classic and unconventional, capturing the spirit of the 1960s and 70s.

Martin Potter is a British actor whose career is marked by an eclectic mix of film, television, and stage roles. He first gained major international attention when Federico Fellini cast him as the lead, Encolpio, in the surreal epic Fellini Satyricon (1969), a performance that showcased his striking looks and ability to navigate complex, dreamlike material.
Potter followed this with notable roles in films like Goodbye Gemini (1970), where he plays the troubled and obsessive Julian, and Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), portraying Prince Yussoupov.

Potter’s career continued through the 1970s and 1980s with a range of genre work, including horror films like Craze 1974 with Jack Palance and Satan’s Slave (1976) and the TV mini-series The Legend of Robin Hood (1975), in which he played the title role. On television, he appeared in series like Doctor Who, The Borgias, and A.D., demonstrating his versatility across historical, fantastical, and dramatic genres.

Known for his intense screen presence and ability to embody both sensitivity and menace, Potter brought a unique, almost androgynous charisma to his roles, qualities that made his performances in psychologically complex films like Goodbye Gemini especially memorable. His career, while perhaps never reaching the mainstream stardom of some contemporaries, remains notable for its adventurous choices and the lasting impression he left in cult and arthouse cinema. To me, Martin Potter possesses an ethereal, otherworldly beauty, almost fairytale-like striking, as if he’s wandered out of a dream or stepped from the passages of a fabled world. I find his features both celestial and enchantingly unreal.

In Goodbye Gemini, the city Jacki and Julian enter is a carnival of decadence and decay, captured in Geoffrey Unsworth’s dreamy, soft-focus cinematography. London’s nightclubs, strip bars, and swinging houseboat parties pulse with jazz-funk and lounge music (Christopher Gunning’s score is a highlight). The film’s parade of drag queens, swingers, and hustlers offers a snapshot of a counterculture, already the carnival atmosphere slowly casting a shadow over itself. All the bright colors of the era bleeding into something more toxic, darker, and more desperate.

The twins’ fashion is as striking as their behavior: Jacki’s mod dresses and Julian’s flamboyant, gender-fluid ensembles are emblematic of the era’s anything-goes ethos, but also signal their detachment from the world around them.

Things spiral when they fall in with Clive (Alexis Kanner), a charismatic but predatory gambler and pimp whose debts and schemes drag the twins into a web of blackmail and sexual violence. Clive’s manipulation of Julian is especially cruel: after plying him with drugs and alcohol, he arranges for Julian to be sexually assaulted by two of his “Circus” prostitutes in drag, photographing the act for leverage in a blackmail scheme.

This sequence, and the film’s willingness to confront sexual taboo head-on, marks it as one of the more daring entries in 1970s British horror- a time when the genre was increasingly preoccupied with the breakdown of family, identity, and societal norms.

Judy Geeson is mesmerizing as Jacki, channeling innocence and trauma in the same way. Her performance is the film’s anchor: she is both the object of Julian’s obsession and a victim of the world’s exploitations, moving from wide-eyed naiveté to near-catatonic despair as the story darkens. Martin Potter’s Julian is equally compelling; his delicate beauty and volatility make the character’s descent into madness both pitiable and chilling. Potter has the look of a seraphim, broken and a bit out of sync, trying to navigate the world, all the while consumed by his love for his sister. He moves through life like half of a puzzle piece without a picture, never quite fitting in, always searching for where he belongs, as long as it’s with Jacki.

Their chemistry is palpable, and the film’s many mirror shots and doubled images reinforce the sense that they are two halves of a single, fractured psyche.

The supporting cast adds further texture: Michael Redgrave, in one of his last roles, plays the aging MP James Harrington-Smith, whose attempts to help Jacki are compromised by his own fear of scandal. Alexis Kanner’s Clive is all sleazy charm and menace, while Marian Diamond’s Denise provides a rare note of empathy amid the film’s parade of grotesques.

As the plot unravels, the twins’ insularity proves fatal. After Jacki learns of Clive’s blackmail and the full extent of his cruelty, she and Julian lure him into a ritualistic trap, killing him in a scene that is both surreal and tragic and to be candid, it stands as one of the most macabre and unsettling murder scenes I have encountered in classic horror cinema. The destruction of Agamemnon, their beloved bear, during the murder shatters Jacki’s fragile psyche, and she flees into the city, lost and amnesiac. The film’s final act is a bleak, hallucinatory journey through a London that now feels cold and alien, culminating in a tragic confrontation between the twins that leaves both dead-victims of their own inability to escape the closed world they’ve built for themselves.

Goodbye Gemini is a film of contradictions: it is campy and stylish, yet genuinely disturbing; it revels in the fashions and freedoms of the late ’60s, but ultimately exposes the emptiness and moral bankruptcy beneath the surface.

Its impact on 1970s psychological horror is notable, as it anticipates later films that would explore the dark side of youth culture and the dangers of unchecked desire. The film’s queasy, dreamlike vibe, its willingness to confront taboo, and its visual inventiveness have earned it a cult following, even as some contemporary critics dismissed it as lurid or over-the-top.

Goodbye Gemini stands as a vivid time capsule of a society in transition, its pop-art excess and twisted themes offering both a critique and a celebration of the era’s freedoms and follies. Judy Geeson’s performance, in particular, remains a haunting portrait of innocence corrupted, while the film’s exploration of identity, sexuality, and the limits of familial love continues to showcase the film’s ability to fascinate and unsettle.

#69 down, 81 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes

“It wasn’t a message that stirred the audiences, nor was it a great performance… they were aroused by pure film.” – Alfred Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut about Psycho, adding that it “belongs to filmmakers, to you and me.” Hitchcock deliberately wanted Psycho to look like a cheap exploitation film.

Upon release, Psycho1960 polarized critics. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times initially dismissed it as “sicko” but later included it in his Top Ten of 1960, praising its “bold psychological mystery.”

film critic Roger Ebert that captures the enduring praise for Hitchcock’s Psycho: “What makes Psycho immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.”

Critics like David Thomson dismissed Psycho as a “concession to slasher trash,” arguing that Hitchcock “lost interest” post-Marion’s death. However, film scholars Raymond Durgnat and William Rothman argue that Psycho’s second half intensifies its psychological depth, particularly as Norman Bates spirals further into his fractured psyche. The chilling climax, revealing “Mother” as a mummified corpse, forces audiences to confront the unsettling reality of dissociative identity —a theme Hitchcock explores with meticulous rigor and haunting, unsettling intimacy.

From the very first jarring notes and the fractured lines that slice across the screen, spelling out “Psycho” in stark relief, we’re warned that we’re stepping into a story where nothing is as it seems. A ripple of unease builds, echoing the rising strings, as Hitchcock draws us into a world stitched together from secrets, betrayals, and broken minds. Joseph Stefano’s adaptation of Robert Bloch’s novel doesn’t just give us a tale of stolen money and shadowy murders—it peels back the wallpaper of ordinary life to reveal deeper questions about who we are and what we desire. Beneath its surface, Psycho is a mirror reflecting the anxieties of a society obsessed with appearances and haunted by what lurks beneath: the pull of forbidden wants, the tension between who we pretend to be and what we can’t admit even to ourselves. The film quietly warns us that when people are forced to hide or deny their true selves, when identity and desire are locked away, darkness finds a way to seep through the cracks, and the most shocking horrors can wear the most familiar faces.

Before Psycho, most of Hitchcock’s films focused on building suspense and tension between characters, often using color and rarely diving deep into truly deviant or taboo subject matter—aside from a few exceptions like Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train. Hitchcock himself was known around Hollywood as a bit of an oddball: a perfectionist, sometimes difficult on set, and with a reputation for being both controlling and flirtatious. What’s fascinating is that, right as the 1960s were about to shake up society, Hitchcock decided to reinvent himself as a director with Psycho. Working with Joseph Stefano’s daring script, he delivered a film that shocked audiences with its sexual undertones, glimpses of nudity, and that now-legendary, brutally intense shower scene, pushing boundaries in ways he never had before and helping to usher in a new era of psychological horror.

Hitchcock shot Psycho on a modest $800,000 budget, using the crew from his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents rather than his usual feature film team. Filmed in black and white, with long stretches of silence and minimalist sets, the Bates Motel and looming Bates house were constructed on Universal’s backlot. In its raw, visceral style, Psycho shares more with gritty noir films like Detour than with Hitchcock’s polished classics such as Rear Window 1954 or Vertigo 1958.

No other Hitchcock film left a greater impression or such a powerful impact on its audience.

The runaway success of Psycho took Hitchcock aback so much that he reached out to the Stanford Research Institute to investigate what made it such a phenomenon. The film was a stark departure from his earlier, more polished, and high-budget productions, which made its impact all the more surprising to him. What truly astonished Hitchcock was how deeply Psycho connected with audiences in ways he hadn’t fully anticipated. Its unique blend of extreme terror and dark humor created an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything he had achieved before, leaving audiences with a strange mix of both terror and his sardonic sense of humor.

According to film scholar Linda Williams, “Genre study has sometimes been the one place in film studies where repeatable audience pleasures…have been scrutinized” (“Discipline and Fun” 359).

“I was directing the viewers,” the director told Truffaut in their book-length interview. “You might say I was playing them like an organ.”

Hitchcock announced, “The late-comers would have been waiting to see Janet Leigh after she had disappeared from the screen action.” For its original audience, it was the most shocking film they had ever experienced. Hitchcock insisted, “Do not reveal the surprises!”

Janet Leigh pays for Anthony Perkin’s psychosis. Molly Haskell, in From Reverence to Rape makes an observation about the treatment of the Hitchcock woman “She must be punished, her complacency shattered; and so he submits his heroines to excruciating ordeals, long trips through terror in which they may be raped, violated by birds, killed. The plot itself becomes a mechanism for destroying their icy self-possession and their emotional detachment…

… Like Norman Bates ‘mother’ in Psycho, who might, by a stretch of the Oedipal complex, be categorized among the brunettes, they are inclined to be possessive and even a little sticky. The Hitchcock protagonist is attracted to the girl he can’t have, and the misogynist in Hitchcock invests the character with poisonous personality traits to punish her for rejecting him. If Hitchcock’s women must be tortured and punished, his men are fully implicated in the deed — and the more detached they seem, the more guilty and morally responsible. “

The ads proclaimed it loudly, yet no audience could have foreseen Hitchcock’s shocking twists—the brutal murder of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), the apparent heroine, just a third of the way into the film, and the chilling revelation of Norman Bates’s mother. Psycho was marketed with the flair of a William Castle exploitation thriller, heightening its sensational impact. “It is required that you see ‘Psycho’ from the very beginning!”

Slavoj Žižek examines the unsettling narrative shift in Psycho following Marion’s death. The first third of the film highlights how it transitions from her story to a murder mystery centered around Norman Bates. Žižek notes that both Marion’s and Norman’s arcs could function as complete narratives on their own, yet Hitchcock disrupts this structure, creating a jarring effect that reorients the audience’s focus. This deliberate fragmentation underscores the film’s innovative storytelling and its ability to challenge traditional cinematic conventions.

Hitchcock’s decision to kill off Marion Crane in the first part of Psycho shattered the framework of storytelling, transforming the film from a crime thriller to a psycho-sexual shocker and destabilizing audience expectations. This bold move shifted the focus onto Norman Bates, the deeply troubled motel owner whose fractured psyche became a defining template for psychological horror. Hitchcock didn’t stop at narrative shocks—he layered the film with visual cues like mirrors and high-angle shots to evoke voyeurism and duality, drawing viewers deeper into Norman’s disturbed world. And then there’s Bernard Herrmann’s iconic score: among the film’s most indelible elements, and perhaps its most evocative hallmarks, are the shrieking violins during the shower scene, which contrast sharply with the eerie silence of Norman’s final stare, leaving audiences haunted by both sound and stillness.

“The first part (Marion’s story) could well stand alone: it is easy to perform a mental experiment and to imagine it as a thirty-minute TV story, a kind of morality play in which the heroine gives way to temptation and enters the path of damnation, only to be cured by the encounter with Norman, who confronts her with the abyss that awaits her at the end of the road — in him, she sees a mirror- image of her own future; sobered, she decides to return to normal life […] The film’s second part, Norman’s story, is also easy to imagine as a closed whole, a rather traditional unraveling of the mystery of a pathological serial killer.” (Žižek)

Although the twists in Psycho—Marion Crane’s shocking murder and the truth about Norman’s mother–  are now common knowledge, the film remains a chilling thriller. This enduring impact lies in Hitchcock’s skillful crafting of two less obvious elements: Marion’s story setup and her complex dynamic with Norman Bates. Hitchcock treats these early moments with meticulous care, as though they will carry the entire narrative, making their eventual subversion all the more unsettling.

Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Perkins, and Janet Leigh on the set of Psycho 1960.

Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, who played Norman Bates and Marion Crane, respectively, had a license to improvise their parts in Psycho to some degree. Hitchcock gave them free rein within scenes, as long as their ad-libbing didn’t change the angle required for a shot.

The film’s screenwriter, Joseph Stefano, would later describe one piece of improvisation by Perkins as his “most magical moment” in the film. It was the actor’s own decision to have Norman chewing on candy corn, nervously watching on as Marion’s car descends ever-so-slowly down into a swamp.” – (Source – during the scene where Norman disposes of Marion’s body – according to Guy Howie’s article published Mon, 25 March 2024, 11:00, UK from FAR OUT).

The setup revolves around a recurring Hitchcock theme: the guilt of an ordinary individual ensnared in a criminal act. Though Marion Crane steals $40,000, she remains emblematic of Hitchcock’s archetype—an otherwise innocent person caught in the web of wrongdoing.

This is not unlike Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964), in which he revisits his fascination with women on the run and the symbolic significance of their possessions, particularly their suitcases. In the film’s opening scenes, even before we meet Marnie herself, we are introduced to the items she has acquired: a bright yellow handbag containing stolen money, a new suitcase, freshly purchased clothes, and gifts for her mother. These objects are meticulously packed into her suitcase, reflecting not only Marnie’s compulsive need for control but also her attempts to construct a new identity.

Marion Crane’s introduction is far from glamorous—a clandestine afternoon in a dingy hotel room with her divorced lover, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), whose alimony keeps marriage out of reach. Enter $40,000, courtesy of a sleazy real estate client, Mr. Cassidy (Frank Albertson), who all but implies that Marion herself might have a price. Ironically, her crime is born of love, and her victim is hardly worth pity—a slimy opportunist who practically invites his own downfall.

Unveiling the Layers of Madness: Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and the Birth of Modern Horror:

Let’s face it: Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates is an enigmatic anti-hero. Similarly, in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Joseph Cotton’s Uncle Charlie’s chilling monologue about widows deserving death is framed from his niece’s horrified point of view. This juxtaposition of intimacy and menace creates both empathy for her fear and fascination with his charisma. By fostering empathy for antagonists, Hitchcock challenged traditional notions of good versus evil in horror storytelling.

Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic virtuosity with his seminal psycho-sexual thriller, Psycho, has elevated the film to an unparalleled status in the history of cinema, rendering it instantly recognizable and profoundly influential. And let’s face it, what Jaws did for swimming in the ocean, Psycho did as the first horror movie that took away the safety of taking showers in your own home!

With his adaptation of Robert Bloch’s 1959 pulp novel of the same name, Bloch conjured Norman Bates, his mysterious and elusive mother, and the Bates Motel, helping it become a landmark in film history, renowned for its masterful direction and psychological depth. But his conjuration had its roots in the deeply disturbing, grim reality that defies the realm of myth and fantasy.

Continue reading “Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes” →

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #19 Beware My Brethren 1972 & When a Stranger Calls 1979

BEWARE MY BRETHREN 1972

Beware My Brethren 1972 (also known as The Fiend) is a ’70s British psychological thriller directed by Robert Hartford-Davis. The film explores themes of religious fanaticism, sexual repression, and murderous obsession.

The story centers around the Wemys family: Birdy Wemys (Ann Todd), A diabetic widow who has become deeply involved with a fundamentalist religious sect called “the Brethren.” Kenny Wemys (Tony Beckley known for his disturbing portrayal of the homicidal psychopath Curt Duncan in When A Stranger Calls 1979), Birdy’s troubled and socially inept son, becomes a serial killer targeting young women he perceives as sinful. Patrick Magee plays the charismatic leader of the Brethren.

Brigitte Lynch (Madeleine Hinde) is a nurse hired to care for Birdy.  Paddy Lynch (Suzanna Leigh), who plays Brigitte’s sister, is a journalist who goes undercover to investigate the Brethren.

The film is notable for several unsettling aspects. For one thing, its religious fervor: The Brethren’s intense services, complete with gospel-style music and frenzied baptisms, create an atmosphere of religious hysteria that is almost as disturbing as the killings. The graphic violence exacted by Kenny’s murderous mania and hatred of women is portrayed in brutal detail, with victims being strangled, stripped naked, and disposed of in shocking ways (e.g., dropped from cement mixers, hung on meat hooks, drowning, and crucifixion.

The sexual repression is not only attributed to Kenny’s murderous impulses, which are driven by his disgust at perceived sexual immorality, leading to disturbing scenes of violence against women but by his mother’s own sexual repression and latent lesbian desires. The Minister’s psychological manipulation and control over his followers, particularly Birdy, showcases the dangerous power of cult-like religious groups.

Director Hartford-Davis uses unsettling images, including dream sequences and vivid color contrasts, to create a disorienting and nightmarish atmosphere.

The opening sequence intercuts a religious service with the pursuit and murder of a young woman, set to an incongruously upbeat gospel song that includes lyrics like Wash Me In His Blood. Kenny’s attack on a prostitute, which involves forcing a torch down her throat, is particularly ferocious. Birdy’s lesbian attraction to Paddy leads to her being denied life-saving insulin by the Minister. All these elements, the religious extremism, sexual repression, and violence, make Beware My Brethren a deeply uncomfortable British video nasty.

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS 1979

When a Stranger Calls (1979), directed by Fred Walton, is one of the most chilling psychological thrillers of the late 1970s that has become a cult classic, particularly due to its shocking, nail-biting opening sequence.

Tony Beckley’s performance as Curt Duncan, the psychopathic killer, was notably compelling due to the actor’s low affect and intensity. Beckley portrayed Duncan as a complex character, balancing between a desperate attempt at sanity and terrifying volatility, tearing two young children apart with his bare hands.

Beckley did a masterful job of making his fiend both sympathetic and frightening. Tragically, this was Beckley’s final film role, as he passed away shortly after the movie’s release.

The film’s reception was mixed upon its initial release: Critics praised the opening 20-23 minutes, consistently regarding it as one of the scariest openings in film history. If memory serves me, it made me jump out of my seat in the theater. Despite mixed reviews, the film was commercially successful, grossing between $21.4 to $25 million against a $1.5 million budget.

Director Fred Walton, along with co-writer Steve Feke, based the story on the urban legend of “the babysitter and the man upstairs.” They claimed to have drawn inspiration from a real newspaper article about a babysitter in Santa Monica who received threatening calls from an attacker inside the house. The cast includes Carol Kane as Jill Johnson, the babysitter, Charles Durning as John Clifford, the undaunted detective on Duncan’s trail, and Colleen Dewhurst as Tracy, the barfly to whom Duncan takes an odd shine to.

The film’s narrative structure is unique, essentially combining two short stories with a police procedural middle section. The opening sequence, featuring Kane as the terrorized babysitter, is particularly noteworthy for its escalation of the tension and use of the telephone as a source of horror. Reminiscing of Bob Clark’s Black Christmas 1974, which used the telephone ingeniously. Black Christmas weaponizes it as an instrument of psychological terror, serving as a seminal example of this technique. The film’s masterful use of menacing phone calls transforms a mundane household object into a conduit for fear, creating an atmosphere of inescapable dread.

#19 down, 131 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

Provacateur & Libertine Roger Vadim’s Dark Satire: Pretty Maids All In A Row (1971): Rock Hudson’s Killer Casanova & The Garden of Earthly Delights – “Wonder why they always seem to die with a smile on their face?”

Pretty Maids All in a Row is a 1971 film directed by Roger Vadim, blending elements of black comedy, sex, and murder mystery. Set in a California high school during the sexual revolution, it follows serial killer Michael ‘Tiger’ McDrew (Rock Hudson), who targets his female students. The film satirizes American high school culture and societal attitudes towards sex and violence.

In this dark sexploitation comedy by Vadim, Rock Hudson plays a beloved football hero/ faculty member who is, in fact, a lady-killer preying on the female student body at his high school!

Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Pretty Maids All in a Row is bathed in hazy colors similar to that of Bosch’s epic triptych painting. I’m starting this post by emphasizing Bosch’s iconic work of art, as it significantly shapes the narrative.

This intricate panel of images appears in the film several times as a motif. Vadim possessed a clear grasp of what he was informing us about. It touches on a vital element and is the fundamental part of the narrative’s soul, yet it bears no resolution for us, the ‘voyeurs’, by the film’s end. Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson) has this painting in her apartment. We see it in several sequences; By framing the object in a tight close-up, scrutinized by the lens, the camera invites a nuanced inspection, underscoring Vadim’s intention to emphasize the painting’s thematic significance.

Read the feature below, which includes an Angie Dickinson overview!

It’s the pictures that got small! – “Good Evening” Leading Ladies of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour Part 1

Bosch’s painting serves as a prominent motif throughout the film.

Close-ups in the film at varying viewpoints of Bosch’s painting.

The painting depicts nude figures in the garden of temptation, ultimately setting them forth unto an eternal dance with damnation.

From Wiki:

The left panel depicts God presenting Adam to Eve, while the central panel is a broad panorama of sexually engaged nude figures, fantastical animals, oversized fruit, and hybrid stone formations. The right panel is a hellscape and portrays the torments of damnation.

“Art historians and critics frequently interpret the painting as a didactic warning on the perils of life’s temptations. However, the intricacy of its symbolism, particularly that of the central panel, has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries. 20th-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych’s central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost. American writer Peter S. Beagle describes it as an “erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty.”

One could say that this suburban American High School acts as a similar landscape depicted in Bosch’s painting. The school is ripe for sexual and unconventional anarchy, abound with young flesh, exploring a ‘perfect liberty’ flitting about in micro skirts and no bras, amidst the intoxicating air of youth and temptation.

Tiger McDrew reads Don Juan to his class.

Leaving these young people vulnerable and tempted by devouring demons like Tiger McDrew, who comes and preys upon their alluring innocence. Much like the painting, Pretty Maids has a sense of erotic derangement that turns us into every bit the voyeur. The film is a thought-provoking amalgamation of interrelated questions, ultimately yielding a profound exploration of moral ambiguities and the deeply embedded systemic, hierarchical, and hegemonic complexities and challenges that shape historical narratives.

Add Vadim’s European, self-proclaimed Libertine sensibilities and his view of American culture, and you get a psychopathic Don Juan in Tiger McDrew, with voyeuristic close-ups of supposed adolescent young girls (the actresses were older) and a society that both condemns and perpetuates it.

An alternative title to this blog post – I could say might be this:  “The Americanization of Debauchery, Perversion, Panties, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights transfixed on the modern high school campus. The Socratic Infusion of Free Love & the Sexual Revolution. With traces of Bluebeard, Casanova. Sexism & Misogyny, the POV of the New Wave European Aestheticism of the Female Body as Fetish. Pom Poms, Peace Signs, The Cult of American Hero worship Molière & Lord Byron’s Don Juan with a smattering of Svengali, as a Homicidal Pedagogue in a tight pants.”

In Pretty Maids All In A Row, Ponce (John David Carson) and substitute teacher Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson) both read from Milton’s Paradise Lost. The telling of how Satan fell from grace, Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, the angels fought amongst each other, and innocence becomes sacrificed as just part of the epic tale.

PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW – From the nursery rhyme, Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.

Rock Hudson was the romantic leading man of the 1950s and 60s.

Tiger McDrew Hudson’s character exerts a subtle yet potent influence, leveraging his authority to manipulate and intimidate with understated finesse.

Continue reading “Provacateur & Libertine Roger Vadim’s Dark Satire: Pretty Maids All In A Row (1971): Rock Hudson’s Killer Casanova & The Garden of Earthly Delights – “Wonder why they always seem to die with a smile on their face?”” →

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #15 Black Christmas 1974

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror!

BLACK CHRISTMAS 1974

The Dark Side of Christmas: Exploring Bob Clark’s Pioneering Slasher Black Christmas 1974

Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974) is a seminal proto-slasher film that laid the groundwork for the genre. It stars Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, and John Saxon. The film follows a group of sorority sisters who are terrorized by an unknown obscene caller/killer during the Christmas season. It has a ring of urban legend that gives a nod to ‘the killer’s inside the house’ trope. Clark’s direction creates a chilling atmosphere through the innovative use of POV shots and claustrophobic settings within the sorority house as ‘dirty Billy’ stalks his prey.

The film’s most unsettling scenes include the disturbing phone calls from the unseen maniac, whose unhinged rants are masterfully performed by Nick Mancuso and Clark himself (uncredited). Hussey’s portrayal of Jess, a strong-willed protagonist dealing with a personal crisis, adds depth to the typical “final girl” trope. Black Christmas can absolutely be seen through a feminist lens as the empowered Jess (Olivia Hussey) takes command of her own body without the influence of her manipulative and controlling boyfriend, Keir Dullea.

Kidder’s performance as the sharp-tongued Barb provides comic relief that contrasts sharply with the mounting tension. The film’s climax, set in the house’s shadowy basement, is a masterclass in suspense, with Jess confronting both the killer and her boyfriend Peter (Dullea), leaving the audience guessing until the end. Clark’s decision to leave the killer’s identity and motives ambiguous adds to the film’s enduring mystery and psychological impact.

Before John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978, Black Christmas distinguishes itself with its nuanced approach to horror, merging realistic characters with an unsettling, almost surreal, claustrophobic atmosphere of dread. Clark’s masterpiece has had a profound influence on the genre and the countless slasher films that followed.

#15 down, 135 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!