Halloween movies: Kenneth Turan’s seductively scary picks
Kenneth Turan’s DVD pick of the week; Movies for Halloween. The Vincent Price Collection, The Devil Bat, Eyes with out a face, and I Married a Witch.
With Halloween here, some classic scary films are appearing on the horizon, less graphic than their modern counterparts, but no less effective for that.
A personal favorite is that eerie classic from France, Georges Franju’s elegant “Eyes Without a Face,†about a mad doctor who will do anything -- anything! -- to restore his daughter’s destroyed face. Newly released in Blu-ray by Criterion, it’s truly unnerving from start to finish.
Less formally beautiful but equally memorable is the six-film “Vincent Price Collection,†released by Scream Factory, which includes some of the actor’s memorable collaborations with producer-director Roger Corman: “The Pit & the Pendulum,†“The Fall of the House of Usher,†“The Masque of the Red Death†and so on into the night.
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Wackiest film of the bunch is Bela Lugosi in post-Dracula mode starring in “The Devil Bat†as a scientist who uses a huge mutant bat to wreak havoc in the world. Released by Kino, this is pure Poverty Row all the way.
If you are in the mood for something light as well as supernatural, the choice would have to be Criterion’s release of Rene Clair’s “I Married a Witch,†a supernatural screwball comedy about a witch and her unlikely beau starring Frederick March and an otherworldly Veronica Lake.
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