Series: Film / TV

Carnival of Souls directed by Herk Harvey

George A. Romero was not the first industrial filmmaker to release a landmark B&W horror picture in the 1960s. Romero, after churning out commercials for TV and those industrial films for Pennsylvania-based The Latent Image, came out with the seminal Night of the Living Dead in ’68, but Herk Harvey had beaten him to the punch by a good six years. Harvey, in 1961, was working for Centron Films in Lawrence, Kansas, also cranking out industrial and educational films, before coming out with a film the following year,

Phenomena directed by Dario Argento

Not to be confused with the 1996 John Travolta movie Phenomenon, Dario Argento’s Phenomena was released 11 years earlier, in January 1985. The film comes freighted with a mixed reputation — some seem to feel it is the Italian director’s worst, while others opine that it is his last great effort — although Argento himself has declared it to be his favorite film amongst his 19 to date; indeed, he has called Phenomena, his ninth picture as a director, “my most personal film.”

The Gorgon directed by Terence Fisher

Just one of the pictures that Hammer Films turned out in 1964, out of an eventual eight, The Gorgon finds the famed studio dipping into the well of Greek mythology for the first time, to come up with still another solid horror entertainment. The film, besides reuniting Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (the two would ultimately appear in a whopping 22 pictures together!), also showcased the talents of director Terence Fisher, who would helm 27 films for the House of Hammer by the end of his career (including such beloved pictures as Four-Sided Triangle,

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind directed by Hayao Miyazaki

After an event alluded to as the Seven Days of Fire, civilization as we know has been destroyed and humanity’s remaining population scattered into isolated communities. Most of the globe is overrun by toxic jungles that produce spores deadly to human beings, and explorers must use gas-masks to protect themselves whenever they venture out into the wilderness.

Added danger comes from the insect life that now dominates the earth, particularly those known as the Ohmu. They look rather like giant pill-bugs with bulbous eyes that change colour depending on their moods,

La Belle et la Bête directed by Christophe Gans

If you’re going to adapt the fairy tale of “Beauty and the Beast”, you’d best make sure you do it properly, because you have to live up to the bar set by Jean Cocteau’s 1946 black-and-white film and Disney’s 1991 animated version — both classic films in their own right.

There’s also a challenge in adapting the original material, which essentially involves a loving father giving up his daughter to a monster to save his own skin, and a young girl being wooed by a terrifying beast who emotionally blackmails her into staying with him by insisting he’ll die without her.