Monstrous Mondays: The Classics of the Horror Film

 Today's Monstrous Monday is a special treat for me. I scored what I consider to be one of the pivotable books of my childhood and one that led to my love of horror movies and my love of monsters in D&D and other RPGs.  William K. Everson's The Classics of the Horror Film.

My dad had a bunch of these classic film books by William K. Everson. They were all black with some gold lettering on the spine. They covered silent movies, westerns, there was one on "The Bad Guys" and think one on the movies about WWII. But this is the one I read over and over and over again.

I was not much more than 4 or 5 and I already knew who Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, and Boris Karloff were. I remember making mental lists of movies I wanted to see from this book. It is, among some other influences that lead to love horror movies and vampire movies in particular.

When I got older, and our access (well, everyone's access) to older movies went beyond the occasional re-run on Saturday afternoon classic movies or the Friday or Saturday night Creature Features, my dad and I would watch these movies. We talked about the differences between American, British, European and Japanese horror movies. How the Universal Classics differed from the Hammer Horror era, and how the Exorcist and later Jaws changed everything.

Flipping through this book now is like flipping through a high school yearbook. I am seeing picture of old, almost forgotten friends. 

Elsa Lancaster left a deep mark on my psyche from 1975 on.

Mary Pickford, an unlikely "Final Girl*," but was enough to make me remember her and use bits of her movies in my D&D games. 

Ok she is not a real "Final Girl" here, but if this movie was remade today she would be.

My dad and I used to rave about this scene in Dracula above. Not just how impressive it was to film and the set to build, but how it conveys Dracula's command over the scene. 

I always liked that photo of Pamela Franklin in "The Legend of Hell House." You know some scary shit is going on here, even if there is nothing in the photo that is scary on its own. Just her eyes and her bare feet just barely touching the ground. You get the feeling that she is safe, as long as she just doesn't get up and walk away. BTW, she is still alive today.

My fascination with horror movies, giant monster movies, monsters in general, and to no small degree, these posts for Monstrous Mondays, all come from this book.

I already added it to my Appendix O I am planning on using it for my October Horror Movie Marathon.