Behind the Couch

As I’ve mentioned on here before, I consider myself quite a hardened horror fan. It takes a lot to actually scare me. The stuff I find that tends to inflict sleepless nights upon me is low-key, subtly suggestive material, not wall to wall gore. The last film I saw that truly ‘scared’ me was Insidious . In it, a family who believe their house is haunted eventually realise that their comatose son has been attracting evil spirits who want to possess his body, while his soul is stuck in a permanent state of astral projection, lost in a shadowy realm where the dead don’t rest easy. Even though the film follows a vulnerable young family and the inconceivable forces that stalk them, Insidious still has a cold, often detached feel which really enhances its ability to disturb. Perforated with unsettling imagery, methodically orchestrated jump scares, moments of flesh-creeping dread and (for the most part) a slow-burning and ominous atmosphere, Insidious is a well crafted and unnervin...

Fire Walk With Me marked David Lynch’s return to his beloved Twin Peaks ; albeit a return lovers of the series didn’t quite expect. Not only was it a prequel, charting the bleak and disturbing last seven days of Laura Palmer’s life, but it also marked a drastic shift in tone that left many fans out in the cold. Gone were the cherry pies and damn fine coffees, and in their place was a dark tale of domestic abuse, incest and what lurks in the sick, twisted underbelly of small town America. As it serves as an exploration of Laura’s tragic demise, it isn’t surprising that Fire Walk With Me exhibits some of the most poignant, creepy and nightmarishly bizarre moments and imagery from Lynch’s work to date. All set to the strains of one of Angelo Badalamenti’s most evocative and haunting scores yet. We follow Laura (Sheryl Lee) as she descends into an ever hopeless spiral of drugs, prostitution and ritualistic abuse at the hands of those she’s closest to. Throughout the course of the...

In a film peppered with spine-tinglingly creepy moments, it still wasn’t difficult to select the very creepiest. Just the thought of it sends shivers down my spine as I type this. Josh, Heather and Mike travel to Burkittsville (formerly Blair), Maryland, to interview locals about the legend of the Blair Witch for a documentary Heather is making. The locals tell them of a hermit named Rustin Parr who lived in the woods surrounding the town. He kidnapped local children and brought them to his house. It is said Parr brought the children into his basement in twos - he could apparently feel their eyes staring into his soul, so he would kill one child while making the other stand in a corner facing the wall. He would then kill the other child in the corner. Parr eventually turned himself in to the police, claiming that the spirit of the Blair witch convinced him to kill the children. After a couple of harrowing days and nights lost in the forest, Josh disappears and Heather and Mike com...

The Mummy 1932 Dir. Karl Freund Egypt, 1921. A team of British archaeologists led by Sir Joseph Whemple uncover the mummified remains of Imhotep, an ancient high priest. When one young archaeologist reads from a sacred scroll, the Mummy comes to life – and the young man becomes delirious, eventually going insane. 10 years later Sir Joseph returns to Egypt with his son Frank. Unknown to them, the Mummy has revived itself and now exists as Ardath Bay, a mysterious man who helps the expedition uncover the tomb of his ancient love. Ardath Bay/Imhotep wants to be reunited with his love, but in order to that, the woman she has been reincarnated as, Helen Grosvenor, must die… The opening scene of this classic horror tale contains one of the most chilling moments in early horror cinema. After having inadvertently resurrected the Mummy, which we see slowly opening its eyes as the scroll’s contents are recited, Ralph Norton (Bramwell Fletcher), a young archaeologist, sets about studying t...

Adapted from Stephen King’s best selling 1975 novel of the same name, Tobe Hooper’s supremely creepy TV mini-series follows writer Ben Mears (David Soul) as he travels back to his hometown of Salem’s Lot in order to write a new novel and research the old Marsten house. The house’s latest tenants are causing quite a stir in the town. One of them, sinister Richard Straker (James Mason), runs a small antique shop in the town; the other resident, the mysterious silent partner Kurt Barlow, has yet to be glimpsed by anyone. It becomes clear as the series unfolds, that Barlow is an ancient master vampire and is gradually turning the residents of Salem’s Lot into vampires. One of his first victims is a young boy, Ralphie Glick. Glick disappears soon after Straker and Barlow move into town. His grisly fate becomes clear later in the series in a scene that makes the blood run cold and hairs prick up… Ralphie appears floating outside his brother Danny’s bedroom window, feebly scratching at t...

Mannequins have frequently been used to supremely creepy effect in horror cinema. From Mario Bava’s early giallo Blood & Black Lace , with its lavish fashion house peppered with dress makers dummies, to 1979’s eerie Tourist Trap with its bizarre roadside museum chock-full of the uncanny things, it is fair to say that mannequins are officially creepy. An early episode of the Twilight Zone called The After Hours  also utilises the spooky plastic people to shuddering effect, and then it manages to do something genuinely original with them too… Anne Francis stars as Marsha White, who enjoys shopping and browsing in expensive boutique shops. Mooching around a colossal department store looking for a gold thimble for her mother, Marsha is taken to the 9th floor by the elevator operator: a floor that does not appear on the elevator panel. When she reaches the 9th floor, Marsha is greeted by a slightly awkward saleswomen, who shows her the only item on the floor: a gold thimble! ...

John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness is an underrated, highly moody horror flick from 1987. After the discovery of a giant canister containing an eerie green and swirling mass under a church, a group of students specialising in philosophy, science, theology and linguistics are invited by a troubled priest (Donald Pleasance) to investigate. They realise that the canister will act as a doorway to hell but the only way to open the canister is from the inside… Soon, the liquid begins to seep out and possess the students, one by one. Meanwhile outside, a group of menacing vagrants led by Alice Cooper surround the church and the remaining students must barricade themselves in, unaware that their colleagues are gradually becoming possessed by the evil in the canister. The collective dream shared by the students is, for this reviewer anyway, incredibly creepy and unsettling. A static-hewn shot of a shadowy figure lingering sinisterly in a doorway backlit with spectral light, is perhaps th...