Black and white 'Classics' you haven't seen

Trash Epics

Now you have AIDS!

Jan 2018

I already have my watchlist https://trashepics.com/post/1/366/ , but like most of you would already guess, the list is never-ending. You always find more shit to watch, and somehow, there are always more movies that you missed.

Some black & white titles I'm hoping to scout out this month:

The Night of the Hunter (1955) - in the TE top 100, at # 57
The Haunting (1963) - I feel like I might have watched this, but I don't remember anything about it.
The Innocents (1961) - Ditto.
Diabolique (1955) - You'll see this in a lot of fave lists.
Dead of Night (1945) - Some kind of anthology? Also in a lot of fave horror lists.
Metropolis (1927) - Some sort of innovative film for back in its day? I heard there's a version with a Queen soundtrack.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) - Lon Chaney, right? Man of thousand faces... ugly ones!
Casablanca (1942) - Something about nazis and a train? Probably why Bogart is regarded so highly...
Eyes without a Face (1960) - The imagery of that not-face/mask has become somewhat iconic.
The Elephant Man (1980) - David Lynch?!
The Body Snatcher (1945) - Some classy-looking Karloff movie?

There's probably a bunch of good William Castle flicks I've never seen, too. So are there any black and white movies regarded as classics that you still haven't seen? Even after knowing about them for years?

I finished Twilight Zone season 2, and I need to focus on movies now.

💬 19 🗨️ Reply

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Box_a_Hair says:

Jan 2018

Scratch one off the list with my first viewing of Diabolique (1955). What a classy movie, but then again, those French are always about being classy, right? I guess I had to pay more attention to this than most movie, because I had to read the subtitles, but it was exceptionally well crafted. Worth the watch.

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Box_a_Hair says:

#4, Reply to #3

Jan 2018

I have the "best of Abbott & Costello vol. 3", just because I couldn't find A&C Meet Frankenstein by itself, so I've watched a few of them. They're not bad movies, really. Generally amusing, but I still think A&C will be best remembered for uniting Frankenstein, Chaney's Wolfman, and Lugosi's Dracula (and Vincent Price's brief role as (the voice of) the Invisible Man).

Why Lugosi wanted to use the bumbling fat guy's brain for his evil bidding is beyond me!

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Box_a_Hair says:

#6, Reply to #5

Jan 2018

The war must have made people overly sensitive on dark subject material, so they felt they ought to make a joke out of these once horrifying monsters. Dracula and Frankenstein had people fainting in the theaters, and 17 years later, Frankenstein has to deal with Costello's fat ass sitting on him, and Glenn Strange still never does anything worthwhile in the movie. The dude was in 3 Universal Frankenstein roles, and he doesn't do shit in any of them. And Lugosi? His only return to the role, and it's a complete joke. At least he fights the wolf man in it, for no good reason.

I don't think the 40s had any great horror films.

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Box_a_Hair says:

#8, Reply to #7

Jan 2018

I've been watching a lot of Twilight Zone lately, and that show is filled with cold war themes, coming out during the tail end of the 50s. Even the 1950s horror wasn't great, but the sci-fi era introduced a lot of new ideas to audiences. Especially when stuff like the Twilight Zone came out. That wasn't particularly "horror" as much as it was supernatural, somewhat unsettling, and unthought of at the time.

I suppose that's what people needed. There were too many real monsters in the world at the time, so the fake ones were starting to look a bit like sock puppets, maybe.

Wolfman probably is the most notable horror film to come out of the 40s, me thinks. And while I love it, it's hardly a milestone. It wasn't even Universal's first werewolf movie.

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Box_a_Hair says:

#10, Reply to #9

Jan 2018

No, that doesn't count at all.

There's just something legit about Hitchcock's take on it, and while Vince Vaughn recently won over my heart with Cell Block 99, he ain't a fit for Norman Bates at all. Do yourself a favor and watch the original. It's one of the best movies ever.

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Box_a_Hair says:

#15, Reply to #14

Jan 2018

Vampyr was a very boring movie. It gets praised for its atmosphere, but that doesn't carry the movie as much as it needs to. The rest is painfully dull, and I think I fell asleep during it. One day, I might finish it as well, but there's no rush.

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