Don't lose your head - Scanners (1981)

Perhaps even more than horror, as a child science fiction was a huge part of my life and interests.  Although the two genres are very closely linked, maybe it is more acceptable to parents for their kids to be in to aliens or little green men than knife wielding killers covered in blood.  Unbelievable.  Scanners is one of those movies that blur the line between sci-fi and horror because if its gore.  It's present day (in the 1980's) and there is a seemingly growing group of powerful psychics and mind controllers called Scanners.  Now a group of scientists take up the services of an informant to destroy them.

Scanner Cameron has been captured by a Doctor Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) and his skills are honed so that he can track down other, more evil scanners. A revolution is happening and they want to take over the world, producing more scanners for their army.  It later becomes apparent that their quirks are in fact the result of a medical experiment conducted on their mothers while they were in the womb.

Cameron is like a child in his affectation, surprisingly trusting, simple and searching for answers.  Conspiracy theories and betrayal are strong themes.  I found it quite reminiscent of Firestarter, with special people being hunted because they have a gift that they can't control and causes harm to others. 

The actual scanning, or mind infiltrating, leads to some quite staggering scenes that may never leave me.  Huge veins protrude out of the side of their faces and along their arms.  They gain size so fast that blood begins the ooze and squirt out of them.  And then they catch fire in a way that can only be described as a thing of beauty.

I can't help thinking that if it had a bigger budget, or indeed if it was remade (wash my mouth out), it would have more of a Fourth Kind feel to the face distortions that go on during the scanning process.  Although it works amazingly well without that CGI and the other effects are quite magnificent.  The real horror here is the control they could have on your mind and the unbelievably devastating effects that that can have on your brain, and indeed your head.  And that's something that no migraine medication can reverse.

Kids, eh! - The Innocents (1961)

I know I go on about the olden days making me feel a little queasy.  Although it's mainly Westerns that I hate, sometimes it's hard to see how a horror film set in a time that I cannot connect to puts me off a little.  How wrong am I?  Very.  Based on the novella The Turn of the Screw, a new governess, Miss Giddens is put in independent charge of two small children, the orphaned niece and nephew of a very busy man. After hearing voices, seeing visions and witnessing the children's behaviour change she begins to think the big old house is haunted.

The niece Flora shows her creepy colours almost immediately, what with staring at her new charge while she sleeps and singing manically and all.  That's enough to put the willies up anyone.  And now her brother Miles is sent home from boarding school for being a bit evil.  Miss Giddens is all fired up to reprimand him but when he arrives he turns out to be quite the charmer.  But a bit too grown up for his own good.  He refuses to talk about school and cuts her off in an authoritative instant.
The children immediately feel too confident, lulling Giddens in to a false sense of security, and thus insuring that it is they who are in charge of her and not the other way around.  As time passes they grow in confidence and maturity and their spontaneous fits of laughter knock you for six.

The lighting in the black and white shines like it is filled with all the colours of the rainbow.  The shadows of the house provide the children plenty of places to hide.  It's very sophisticated camera work for the time, with above waist shots coupled with a teetering footstep giving the impression of the figure floating along the floor.  In focus foreground and background shots, with figures on opposite ends of the frame, make your own vision feel distorted. 

The visions of the ghosts wouldn't look out of place in a John Carpenter film.  The whole piece is a study of perfect ghost story telling.  There are long drawn out scenes of Giddens walking around the house in darkness.  These scenes are not boring, they're excruciating because of the terror you feel at not being able to see around the corner.  At the time censors cut the scene where Miss Giddens kisses the little boy on the lips as it looked too sensual, and I must confess, it does!

Black and white and set in the olden days (sorry, Victorian England) you may think this couldn't possibly hold any horror you would be interested in. So, olden days, seems like I'm coming round to you after all.

A hitchhiker's guide to serial-killing - Psychoville Halloween Special (2010)

For those of you who haven't seen the BBC's comedy horror TV series Psychoville, you need to rectify this as soon as possible.  From the geniuses behind the dark horrific joy (and I mean that in the best possible way) that is The League of Gentlemen (Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton) , we are treated to some old fashioned freaks and horrors and the scum of the earth.  In other words, a delight.  The Psychoville Halloween Special is told in a horror anthology style with a bit of found footage thrown in for good measure.  It also touches on a more gory and modern version of The Vault of Horror.

It begins with a young man called Drew giving a tour of an abandoned mental asylum to a television researcher working on a Most Haunted rip off.  As a boy he was dared to break in to this asylum and while he was there he spied the matron putting pins in to muffins for the Trick or Treaters.  Mmm, sharp.  She captures him and tells him a selection of frightening Halloween tales to teach him a lesson. 

There's an enraged clown who has a penchant for prostitutes and shouting at children.  He fancies himself as a Scrooge for Halloween and gets haunted by some Trick or Treaters.  There's a crazy midwife who thinks her toy doll is actually a real baby. Her and her husband are trying to sell their house but she is 'rubbish at cleaning' throwing her baby's toys all over the place. 

But probably the best story in the anthology is when a mother and son's car breaks down on their way to a fancy dress party.  Arguing over his choice of outfit; 'It would be in bad taste to go as Fred West. Too recent.'  They have to thumb a lift with a man who looks crazier than they do.

Relying on many British references for some of the humour, it nicely sets up the new series coming next year.  You might be thinking, how scary can a TV comedy really be?  But it's scary in a circus of freaks kind of a way.  And it's a testament to the writing that it draws British acting royalty like Imelda Staunton, Eileen Atkins and Dawn French.  And the creepy we're coming to get you feel and all that that brings.  Psychoville is character led.  They find themselves in frighteningly venerable situations they can't get out of; be it allowing their own family to get too close, going in to a stranger's house or by simply making someone angry.  And we all do that in one way or another, don't we?