For Halloween 2015, I'm going to present a new edition of Home Fry-ed Movies, screening the 1960 Roger Corman cult classic The Little Shop of Horrors on UALR's University Television. In researching this movie, I discovered that 1960 was a very important year for horror movies. The Little Shop of Horrors itself is important enough, as a movie that was shot in record time but contributed mightily to the horror comedy genre. (Corman considered it part of a genre he created - the black-comedy horror film, with its direct antecedent his 1959 flick A Bucket of Blood. I think we could definitely find some earlier films that might fit that description, but for now, we'll give Corman his due.) The Little Shop of Horrors spawned an off-Broadway musical, which was also made into a movie in 1986, and a Saturday morning cartoon series from the 1990s. The carnivorous Audrey Jr.'s call to "Feed Me" has become an iconic phrase, and the original movie is still a lot of fun.
Interestingly, many other important horror movies were released in 1960:
Psycho - Did any movie change the horror movie genre more than Alfred Hitchcock's classic tale of a psychotic serial killer? Mild by today's standards, the movie shocked audiences in 1960, with its iconic shower scene, its killing off of a major Hollywood star in the first 30 minutes, and its twist ending. (One of my greatest joys was watching the movie with each of my kids when they were teenagers and seeing their reaction to the ending - I don't know how I managed to keep that secret from these young cinephiles.) While the slasher movie might take more direct inspiration from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas and Halloween, Psycho is the grandfather (or rather grandmother) of them all.
Peeping Tom - We can't mention Psycho without mentioning the lesser known but equally gruesome Peeping Tom, released the same year in Great Britain. (It wouldn't go into general release in the United States until 1962.) The movie nearly ruined the career of director Michael Powell, one of Britain's most talented directors. Like Psycho, Peeping Tom is about a psychotic serial killer. This one kills his victims as he's shooting them with his film camera so he can capture the look on their faces as they die. The movie deals with the deep psychological scars brought on by a parent who was using his child as a social science experiment, something that made this movie extremely cutting edge for 1960.
House of Usher - It seems a little out of step including this seemingly traditional gothic horror tale with two movies about serial killers, but The Fall of the House of Usher was important in its own way. The movie was the first of Roger Corman's series of adaptations of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and like most of them, it starred Vincent Price. Corman made his Poe films in color, bringing the rich redness of blood to the screen while maintaining a sense of death and decay throughout. As the first in the series (and one of the best), House of Usher established the conventions we would see in the films, most notably the delightful overacting of Price.
Black Sunday - While Corman was getting started with his Poe series in the States, Mario Bava was starting his own directing career in Italy with this eerie and gruesome film. Black Sunday, aka The Mask of Satan, features many scenes that had to be cut from screenings in other countries: a mask of Satan being nailed to Barbara Steele's face at the beginning of the movie, eyes gouging out of a corpse, a body burning in a fire. Actress Steele, who plays a resurrected witch and her lookalike ancestor, would become familiar to horror movie fans in the '60s and '70s, and Bava became Italy's foremost director of horror movies and thrillers, followed soon by Dario Argento.
Village of the Damned - Combining horror and science fiction, this 1960 British film presents us with a group of blonde kids with spooky eyes, all conceived on the same day while their mothers are unconscious. It's a classic and should not be missed.
Eyes Without a Face - We've got movies from the U. S., Britain, and Italy. Let's add France to the list. Eyes Without a Face introduces a mad scientist who removes the faces of young women and tries to graft them onto the damaged face of his daughter. The surgery scenes are surprisingly graphic for 1960.
Blood and Roses - Roger Vadim adapted the 19th century vampire novella Carmilla (which predates Bram Stoker's Dracula) and brought the lesbian aspects of the story to the full front. Like most of Vadim's films, it was controversial.
13 Ghosts - Like all of William Castle's horror movies from this period, this one featured a gimmick. "Illusion-O" - special goggles that allowed the viewer to see the ghosts. I've seen the movie many times on TV but never with the special glasses. That would be a real treat!
And just to round out this list of horror movies first released in 1960 to 10, let me include The Brides of Dracula, Hammer studios' sequel to its 1958 hit The Horror of Dracula. Peter Cushing is back as Van Helsing, the vampire hunter, but conspicuous by his absence is Dracula himself, as played by Christopher Lee in the previous film. It would be 1966 before Lee would reprise his role, to much appreciation from fans.
1960 - a horrifying and unique year for the horror movie.
