El escapulario [The Scapular] (Servando González, 1968)
Nov
20
Padre Andrés (Enrique Aguilar). DP: Gabriel Figueroa.
“I'm trying to run an impersonal business. Killing is very personal. Once it gets started, it's hard to stop.”
The Big Combo (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955)
Nov
15
1946
A man's hand holds up a photo negative of a black-and-white picture, showing two men and a woman, and the date 11-15-46 underneath. DP: John Alton.
– Mr. Brown
E tanta paura [Plot of Fear] (Paolo Cavara, 1976)
Nov
14
1975
spoiler warning: click to toggle image
Two newspaper clippings in a scrapbook, one of them with the date November 14. DP: Franco Di Giacomo.
“No, I never left the wheel; not for a moment.”
The Mystery of the Mary Celeste [Phantom Ship] (Denison Clift, 1935)
Nov
11
Anton Lorenzen (Bela Lugosi). DPs: Eric Cross & Geoffrey Faithfull.
– Anton Lorenzen
“Oh keiner macht's wie du,
Wie du so traut sich's keiner,
So wie du”
Das Gold der Liebe [The Gold of Love] (Eckhart Schmidt, 1983)
Nov
9
DAF-fan Patricia (Alexandra Curtis). DP: Bernd Heinl.
– DAF – El Que (Gold und Liebe (1981)
“A premonition of a horror film”
Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky, 1999)
Oct
26
Barbara Hershey as Carla Moran. DP of The Entity: Stephen H. Burum.
[Favourite] psychological horror*
– tagline
Real horror is not found in broken dinner plates or corpuscular masses of light. It's in what the mind does with that input, in how those lux morph into human-like shapes. In how gusts of wind becomes larynx-touched voices. Cut up the neatly filed research papers and be left with the whispers of the mind.
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.
La donna del lago [The Lady of the Lake / The Possessed] (Luigi Bazzoni + Franco Rossellini, 1965)
Oct
25
Tilde (Virna Lisi) caressing a man's hand, resting on her shoulder, with her cheek. DP: Leonida Barboni.
Until November 20.
”'M. Valdemar,' I said, 'are you asleep?' He made no answer, but I perceived a tremor about the lips, and was thus induced to repeat the question, again and again. At its third repetition, his whole frame was agitated by a very slight shivering; the eye-lids unclosed themselves so far as to display a white line of the{n} ball; the lips moved sluggishly, and from between them, in a barely audible whisper, issued the words: 'Yes; — asleep now. Do not wake me! — let me die so!'”
Il caso Valdemar [The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar] (Gianni Hoepli + Ubaldo Magnaghi, 1936)
Oct
24
M. Valdemar on his deathbed.
[A] favourite horror movie overall*
– Edgar Allan Poe, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845) (via)
A man agrees on being hypnotised while in the state of dying. This particularly haunting and efficiently gory film – the first in the genre – is the result.
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.
“No, I never left the wheel; not for a moment.”
The Mystery of the Mary Celeste [Phantom Ship] (Denison Clift, 1935)
Oct
23
Bela Lugosi
Anton Lorenzen (Lugosi) at Mary Celeste's wheel. DPs: Eric Cross & Geoffrey Faithfull.
[A favourite] Bela Lugosi film*
– Anton Lorenzen
A post-Dracula Lugosi demonstrates that he's more than the cursed aristocrat. An efficient early Hammer production, made just a year after their founding.
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.
Nattmara [Nightmare] (Arne Mattsson, 1965)
Oct
19
Tue
spoiler warning: click to toggle image
spoiler warning: click to read
Hands hold up a small diary. The camera is focussed on Tuesday the 19th of October, 1965. Handwriting, a chicken scrawl, reads CITROEN A66692 MAJ BERG ✝. Besides that the week is uneventful. DP: Max Wilén.