David Lorensene
Once a fortnight I will be posting an interactive article about Horror Movies in Horror Movies. It will include a brief synopsis of the scene, with hints plus pictures so you guess what film it is from. The answer will be on the next page so once you think you have it you can click on it to see if you were right.
Its a cold, misty evening and Charlie is up quite late even though it's a school night. The reason he is up so late is so he can spy on his new neighbours, who have been keeping him preoccupied much to the annoyance of his girlfriend Amy. Whilst he is eating some chips and getting an eye full from next door there is a movie playing on the TV in his bedroom which he is missing out on watching, the film is...
Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things which is featured in Tom Holland's Fright Night, as well as a quick shot from Scars of Dracula starring Christopher Lee and Premature Burial directed by Roger Corman.
As well as the werewolf revival during the 1980s there was also a Vampire one, Fright Night was the highest grossing horror movie of 1985, the same year that saw the release of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Fright Night had a great cast and was a good combination of comedy and horror. It was a typical teen horror movie of the time but by having a character like Peter Vincent (a homage to Van Helsing, played by Peter Cushing in a number of Hammer Horror produced Dracula Movies) played by Roddy McDowall, made the film more sentimental and added some depth to it.
Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things was directed by the late Benjamin “Bob” Clark and was his 3rd film and his first Horror Movie. Bob went on to direct the classic and highly influential Black Christmas, which predates Halloween as a holiday slasher. Bob eventually moved away from horror to make comedies such as Porky's. In 2007 Bob Clark was planning to direct a remake of Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things but tragically died in an automobile accident before production plans could get underway.
Scars of Dracula was the 5th Dracula film from Hammer Studios and stars Christopher Lee reprising his famous role. Often regarded as the worst Hammer Dracula film, Peter Cushing isn't in this outing and he is missed as Dracula's nemesis Van Helsing. The critic's panned it as it had more sex and violence than the earlier films.
Premature Burial was made during the Roger Corman, Edgar Allan Poe cycle of films. This one didn't star Vincent Price and was released in 1962 the same year as Tales of Terror. Much like House of Usher the theme of being buried alive is the plot of the film in The Pit and the Pendulum, but because Price wasn't cast in this film it was not as well known and didn't recieve the accliam the other films of the Poe cycle.
Stay tuned for my next instalment of Lurking Within.