What makes a classic horror film

I hesitate to make myself sound like a crabby old man snarling, "Get out of my laser disc store, you little whippersnappers!" but I cannot restrain myself from saying that I weep for any generation that thinks of Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger in the same breath as the term "Classic Horror Films."

"Classic horror films" do not feature mindless, machete-wielding immortal madmen in hockey masks; they feature suave, real-live Hungarians in evening wear, climbing out of Transylvanian crypts to tell you that "I never drink wine."  Classic horror films do not focus on razor-blade-fingered, wise-cracking child murderers from one's dreams; they feature limping Egyptian mummies chasing their reincarnated lost loves, stitched together Germanic monsters with bolts in their necks and a fondness for decaying windmills, and doomed werewolves who prowl around misty Gypsy camps and keep their shirts on.

The films that Mr. Binsfield describes are fun and enjoyable and I saw many of them as a Gonzaga undergrad myself at great, long-lost Spokane venues like the "Y-Drive In," which used to screen all-night horror marathons featuring films like "The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy" and "Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride."  But they are not classic horror films.

Classic horror films are those great films from the 1920s, `30s and `40s made when filmmakers understood — as Boris Karloff and Stephen King agreed — that what we cannot see is always more frightening than anything we can.  They are shot in glorious black and white and feature actors like Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Sr. and Jr., Basil Rathbone, Charles Laughton, Claude Rains, and many other performers who spent more time in acting school than in the gym or standing in front of green screens.

Classic horror films are the Hammer films which came out of England in the `60s and `70s featuring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing long before they were turned into Count Dooku and Grand Moff Tarkin, respectively: "The Curse of Frankenstein," "The Horror of Dracula," "The Devil Rides Out," "The Reptile," "Frankenstein Created Woman," "Taste the Blood of Dracula," and dozens of others.  These films seem models of restraint today but scared the hell out of my friends and me when we saw them on Halloween triple bills like "Scars of Dracula," "Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell," and "Horror of Frankenstein" (the last two of which feature Dave Prowse — Darth Vader's body — as Frankenstein's Monster).  Still even with their now-quaint sexuality and violence, these films manipulate the classic machinery of horror films — from ruined castles and haunted chateaus to forgotten crypts and rubber bats — in ways far more memorable than any by-the-numbers torture porn like the "SAW" films can ever hope to.

When I was a kid in the 1960s we were at the mercy of independent television station programmers to let us see these films.  We had no chance of seeing Bela Lugosi as the voodoo master in "White Zombie" or Charles Laughton as H.G. Wells' Dr. Moreau in "The Island of Lost Souls," unless the "Creature Features" producers decided to show those films.  Today we are much luckier.  Whether it's Dana Andrews passing the runes in "Night of the Demon" or Claude Rains as "The Invisible Man," nearly all those truly classic horror films of the past are available on DVD or On-Demand.

So if you really think you like horror films, try some real classics this October. Forget the blood and guts and look for something with Bela Lugosi in an opera cape, Boris Karloff with bolts in his neck, or a creature-filled Black Lagoon.  These films may not scare the hell out of you the way they did your grandparents, but you will not regret taking time to — as Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula advised — "Listen to them! The Children of the Night — what music they make!