Re-viewing Favourite Horror Films

We all have favourite movies, ones that we revisit over and over again. Long ago, before home video came along, I used to find great flicks on TV, and my faves were shown repeatedly, not just over the years, but even within a single year. 

Just within the horror genre, I delighted in the fun oldies featuring the Wolf Man, Frankenstein monster, the Mummy, and Dracula at least a couple of times a year on the tube. Public television (TVOntario) ran a neat show called Magic Shadows from Monday to Friday, and on there, host Elwy Yost showed these stalwarts of the genre in serialized form... we'd get, say, Dracula split up over maybe four or five nights. Kind of a cool way to enjoy a film, At least I though so as a kid. Maybe not today. And come the weekend, there was Saturday Night at the Movies (again with host Elwy), which featured any number of October-y classics (commercial-free), like those mentioned above, and even The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Bride of Frankenstein, King Kong, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). 

Even on weekend mornings, I'd often locate on TV something like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man or one of the Abbott and Costello "meet the monsters" movies (Mummy, Drac, Frank, etc).. 

Who ever said you couldn't build a great monster on a low budget?

Pumpkinhead (1988)

As a grown-up, and I'd assembled a reasonably-sized home video library, I watched and re-watched those ancient gems, and found other wonders to add to my re-watching experience. It's amazing what you can pick up from films on second, third, and fourth viewings... details you'd missed before, small things or actions in the background, quietly or quickly spoken dialogue, nuances in the acting - facial expressions and gestures, sets and locations, camera shots - like interesting angles, framing and lighting, use of music for effect, and so on. You can develop an even greater appreciation for these masterpieces of cinema through a re-watch. Or even learn to like the not-so-great flicks by noticing aspects besides the bad acting... even the so-called duds can have redeeming qualities!

Here are a bunch of my most re-watched movies up until a few years ago. I've since found I've simply seen these so many times - and know them so well - that I need much longer breaks, like years, in between viewings. These are still great, but I can't watch them very often now:

The Thing ('82)
The Uninvited
The Haunting 
The Changeling
Dead of Night
The Woman in Black ('89)
The Innocents
Curse of the Demon
Curse of the Cat People
Dracula (by Francis Ford Coppola)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Son of Frankenstein (actually, most of the old Universal monster movies)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
An American Werewolf in London
The Shining
Pumpkinhead
The Thing From Another World
Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Brides of Dracula (and several other Hammer horror films, including the following three...)
Curse of Frankenstein
Curse of the Werewolf
Horror of Dracula

The totally wacko last segment in Prometheus (2012)

And here are some of my most current favourites, movies I'm still avid about checking out at least once or twice a year. Somehow Alien has jumped off my "watched too much" list back onto my "re-watch" list... truly an enduring classic. The Wolf Man and Creature oldies are my faves of the Universal Silver Age... it seems they'll never lose their appeal. And since the 50's giant bug films were relatively newer discoveries (except Them!) for me, I am seeing them with fairly fresh eyes... I love the crisp B&W photography that captured the U.S. southwest desert regions, where atomic testing took place in the 1950's... often the reason for the monstrous proportions of the movies' antagonists. Here you go:

Alien
The Wolf Man
Werewolf of London
Creature From the Black Lagoon... and its sequels 
Prometheus
Under the Skin
The Howling
Witchfinder General
Them!
Tarantula
Black Scorpion
Deadly Mantis