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Of the month's worth of posts in 31 Days of Horror, just over half of the films mentioned have either been remade or are scheduled fir remake. I'll leave it to you to decide what that says about the originality rampant in Hollywood today. The last film on this list is no exception, and while I will admit that the Rob Zombie remake of John Carpenter's "Halloween" is more of a love-letter to the film that made Carpenter a true master of horror, it still pales very much to the original ...

 

If I could make a website that just had every picture of "the gill-man" ever photographed, I would (well, I know I could, but I'd have to seriously consider what I was doing with my spare time). The design for "The Creature of the Black Lagoon", by Milicent Patrick has to be one of the best monster designs ever created. What? Never heard of Milicent Patrick? That's because Bud Westmore objected to her being credited with designing the creature (it's not a job for a woman after all) and made sure that ...

 

"Peeping Tom", some say, is Powell's "Freaks" in that it's a very strange film from a director whose primary work up to this point more or less treaded. The straight and narrow. Powell dips deeply into his main character, a psyhopathic killer who uses a camera and tripod as his main weapons, crafting 90% of the narrative from his point of view, a strange choice for a thriller at that time. You are there as he attacks victim after victim, filming their bloody deaths, then watching the footage afterward...

 

"The Haunting" has the rare and curious distinction of being one of only a handful of horror films where you never actually see "the monster" in the whole film. While some may regard this as a disappointment, I see this as the skill of a master director not relying on a rubber suit, optical effect or CGI to evoke fear and terror in the audience ... unlike the 1999 remake of this film, which will leave you literally speechless if you've seen the original, and not speechless in a good way...

 

In 1950, a man appeared on Groucho Marx's popular quiz show "You Bet Your Life", claiming to be an Arab sheik who had so many wives, he'd lost count. Groucho was fascinated. A little ways into the pre-game interview, the man let the host know that it was a hoax, he'd been put up to it by a friend of Groucho's to prove that he couldn't spot a phony. Groucho asked the man's name. "Billy Blatty" the man replied. They continued with the game and Blatty won $10,000. Groucho congratulated him and asked him what he was going to do with the money. Blatty said he was going to take some time off ...

 

Strictly more of a suspense-action film, "Deliverance", at least to me, embodies the best of what a horror film is all about, even if the monsters in this film are really men. The film, like another suspense film where man is the monster, "Silence of the Lambs", the words and actions of the agressors have fallen into modern parlance ... "Dueling Banjos" and "squeal like a pig". Say either, and everyone you're talking to knows your context. "Deliverance", from the novel by James Dickey...

 

"Suspiria" is probably the most well-known of Dario Argento's films. Argento made a name for himself in the late 1970's and early 1980's for exuberant, very lush, colorful and extremely violent horror films. The double murder that opens "Susperia" is a perfect example of this. Here, and in each of his subsequent films, Argento gets more and more ingenious with methods of death. If you thought the varied killings in the "Saw" films was something original, you're dead wrong.

 

The Omen (1976): Gregory Peck, Lee Remick and David Warner. Directed by Richard Donner, Screenplay by David Seltzer.While both "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby" were based on novels prior to being movies, "The Omen" is notable as being the opposite, the novel being written from the screenplay, released only shortly before the film hit cinemas. In this respect, I guess, "The Omen" was a sign on the tide…

 

When I was a kid, The Wolf Man was my favorite monster. I don't know why. I know I wasn't alone. In fact, so fascinated was I by this monster, I'm currently writing a movie about werewolves. With an almost ten year gap filled with pseudo-sequels and suspense thrillers, Universal was due to hit the ball out of the park with another classic monster. This, strangely, was not the first werewolf movie that Universal tackled. 1935 saw "The Werewolf of London" starring Henry Hull and Werner Oland. For whatever reason, after its release...

 

In 1981 director John Landis made something that was slightly unusual at the time: a comedy-horror film. Sure there had previously been comedies with horrific elements and vice-versa, but never before had a relatively light-hearted film delved so deeply into gore and horror. Previously known mainly for madcap comedies ("Animal House" and "The Blues Brothers"), who knew Landis had it in him? Well, die-hard readers of Famous Monsters in Filmland certainly did; both he and fellow monster fan (master-monster-maker) Rick Baker had numerous mentions within its pages over the years ...