Behind the Couch

1963 Dir. Robert Wise A parapsychologist seeking proof of the existence of the supernatural invites a select group of people to join him at the reputedly haunted Hill House. Once there, the group experience sinister events that not only threaten their sanity, but their very lives… Are these occurrences the result of a genuine haunting, or are they conjured by the unstable mind of one of the guests? Director Robert Wise was a protégé of Val Lewton’s in the 1940s, and made his directorial debut on Lewton’s production of Mademoiselle Fifi , before working on the moody horror films Curse of the Cat People and The Body Snatcher . Shortly after he filmed West Side Story , Wise thought it high time he paid tribute to the man who gave him his start in the film business. In Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House , Wise found the perfect blend of understated horror, fractured psychologies and icy atmospherics with which to pay homage to Lewton and the low key, suggestive horror of...

1977 Dir. Robert Wise Janice and Bill Templeton (Marsha Mason and John Beck), an affluent middle class couple living in New York, look on helplessly as their comfortable existence is shattered when the mysterious and charismatic Elliot Hoover (Anthony Hopkins) enters their lives. He declares that their daughter Ivy (Susan Swift) is actually the reincarnation of his dead daughter Audrey Rose. Is he telling the truth? Or is he a raving psychotic they should cross the street to avoid? When Ivy begins to experience weird seizures and hallucinations, the couple have no choice but to accept the help of Hoover and the family are plunged into a nightmare they may never wake up from… Director Robert Wise began his eclectic career as an editor for RKO. He was given his big break by producer Val Lewton directing the poetic horror sequel The Curse of the Cat People – a sensitive, deeply moody study of child psychology. Wise would return to the horror arena again with titles such as The Body...

As part of this week's Boris Karloff blogathon , we continue to take a look at the Uncanny One's work with distinguished producer Val Lewton. With work on Isle of the Dead coming to halt only days into the shoot due to Karloff needing to have a spinal operation, Lewton began working on his next film – The Body Snatcher . In early 1944, the ‘period thriller’ began to gain popularity again. Titles such as Gaslight and The Lodger had proved immensely popular with wartime audiences who relished the opportunity to step back in time to find their chills and thrills. After the 1930s cycle of horror films, Lewton had helped ‘Americanise’ and modernise horror with the contemporary Cat People , and many other filmmakers had followed suit; however it soon came to pass that period films were hot again, and Lewton, not content to just remix past glories, was eager to try and make his own mark on the period horror film. Lewton thought it appropriate to return to the world of literatu...