Friday Night Frights

This Friday night 10/27 Turner Classic Movies has a great line-up of classic horror films. So get the popcorn, curl up on your favorite couch and watch these gems if you dare.

The frightful night begins at 8:00 PM EST with White Zombie (1932) with Bela Lugosi–movie inspired by the American interest in voodoo back in the 30′s. Lugosi plays an evil man who owns a sugar mill in the Island of Haiti. Gee I wonder why Haiti? Just kidding. A bunch of zombies work in the sugar mill and are controlled by him. The owner (Lugosi) falls for a young bride-to-be who just happens to be visiting his next-door neighbor. He wants her for himself and resorts to using black magic to do so.

I Walked With A Zombie(1943)–a nurse goes to the West Indies to care for a woman who has an unexplainable mental paralysis. The nurse tries to cure the illness but is unable to. After many failed attempts to heal the woman the nurse resorts to a local voodoo priestess. The nurse soon discovers why this woman is alive—yet dead, and also discovers some awful secrets about the woman’s family.

The Walking Dead (1936)–America was fascinated with zombies, and it was even more so with bringing the dead back to life back in the 30′s. Movie features Boris Karloff as John Elman. John is a paroled convict. He is framed for a murder and punished by death in the electric chair. They try to save his life before he is executed—but are unable to. He is executed but then brought back to life by a scientist (Edmund Gwenn) who experiments on animals. John returns to kill those gangsters that framed him—he pays each one a visit and they mysteriously turn up dead. If you’ve ever seen Devil Doll, it’s the same story but with a different twist.

Creature with The Atom Brain (1955) Huh??? Hey we all know it’s a 50′s B movie, but according to TCM a “superior one.”

“Movie titles can sometimes be deceptive but you know exactly what you’re in for with the aptly named Creature with the Atom Brain (1955). A superior B-horror film with sci-fi elements and a crime syndicate subplot, this 1955 Sam Katzman production gets right down to business before the opening credits even begin with the sound of a beating heart growing louder and an ominous looking figure lurching toward us from out of the dark.” Source {tcm.com}

I left this one for last because it is a cult classic and it still scares the _____ out of me. Feel free to fill in the blank. TCM Underground with Rob Zombie will be featuring George Romero’s, Night of The Living Dead. Some probe has come down from space and crashes into a town. It releases some cosmic energy that turns the dead into flesh-eating zombies. Many people that have seen this movie see a racial message. Ben the black salesman is shot at the end of the movie by a posse that mistaken him for a ghoul. The ones that were supposed to save him–have killed him. It is the 60′s and racial tensions in America were high. What do you think?