The Seventh Victim
Odd Man Out (1947)
Les Diaboliques (1955)
Psycho (1960)
Peeping Tom
Odds Against Tomorrow
The Virgin Spring
Repulsion
Z
The Conversation (1974)
The Silent Partner (1978)
The Stepfather (1987)
With a Friend Like Harry
...if one is willing to see a Polanski film at the moment, that is...of the any number of films that could substitute on that ground, among those which almost made this list but seemed perhaps too obvious and Not Psycho nor Diablolique or not quite right for the first baker's dozen at this hour were the "open" mystery Wild Things (1998), the original The Vanishing, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, the original Assault on Precinct 13, Deliverance and Bullitt.
Odd Man Out (1947)
Les Diaboliques (1955)
Psycho (1960)
Peeping Tom
Odds Against Tomorrow
The Virgin Spring
Repulsion
Z
The Conversation (1974)
The Silent Partner (1978)
The Stepfather (1987)
With a Friend Like Harry
...if one is willing to see a Polanski film at the moment, that is...of the any number of films that could substitute on that ground, among those which almost made this list but seemed perhaps too obvious and Not Psycho nor Diablolique or not quite right for the first baker's dozen at this hour were the "open" mystery Wild Things (1998), the original The Vanishing, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, the original Assault on Precinct 13, Deliverance and Bullitt.
I recently saw the Seventh Victim and was quite impressed. Splendid movie and vastly underrated - at least I'd never heard of it or didn't remember having.
ReplyDeleteIn Psycho what I absolutely adore is Bernard Herrmann's score - that's what makes the movie for me (same thing with Vertigo and North-by-Northwest), such powerful and suspenseful and terrifying music and yet so simple and elegant.
Hmmm, more things to look for. I've not seen With a Friend like Harry or Odd Man Out. Heh, heh -- nice cheating on the list by adding bonus films. Oooh, the original Vanishing -- makes me shiver just thinking of it.
ReplyDeleteWhat, no Body Heat?
Petri--Yes, THE SEVENTH VICTIM and THE LEOPARD MAN vie in my affections among the utterly non-supernatural suspense films the Lewton Unit at RKO filmed in their incredible run, though I still would like to see MLLE. FIFI under better conditions than I was able to on the one occasion. For that matter, the first time I saw THE SEVENTH VICTIM, it was in the garishly colorized version Turner's cable stations were running briefly, but I soon quit that, and saw it properly in its entirety for the first time not long after.
ReplyDeleteI love PSYCHO the original for a number of reasons, but Herrmann's score is certainly one of the most obvious.
Kate--cheating? There are rules? Aside from the ones I vaguely set for myself here...certainly a second 13 horror films immediately suggested themselves, and more, and if there was a clamor or even without one I might post 'em. Maybe even with explication (times are no less busy of late).
ODD MAN OUT is perhaps the Next Carol Reed film everyone might think of after THE THIRD MAN, at least among his suspense films...but, if anything, I think it more intense.
BODY HEAT, which I first saw when still not altogether free of the adolescent hormone rush, so while appreciating the suspense elements of the film, they were not the primary lingering memory of that experience. (However, wondering if and how I should explain anal sex to my 9yo brother, who had accompanied me in 1982 to the 99c double feature of BLADE RUNNER and this other film neither of us had heard of, is a memory that does linger.) Were there other people in that film than Kathleen Turner, btw? SERIAL MOM might well make my third thirteen suspense films...though perhaps by special plea.
A jolly interesting thing about The Leopard Man (at least for us Finns) is that the Finnish-American actress Tuulikki Paananen aka Tula Parma made her only American film role in the movie as the very dishy Consuelo Contreras. Later she was in a couple of episodes of Hawaii Five-O.
ReplyDeleteBy the bye, when I saw The Leopard Man I never realised it was based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich. Makes the movie even more compulsive.
More movies for my Fatso queue (the NZ equivalent of Netflix) - I've only seen 5 of these, and theyr'e all among my favourites. (I doubt I can fake the Virgin Spring by claiming Last House on the Left. ;-)
ReplyDeleteHave you ever seen Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion? That's a movie that would probably have a higher profile today if it hadn't won the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar (oddly enough, the year after Z) - other giallo that are much less interesting have had high-profile dvd releases, but this is still missing.
I have not seen more than a few minutes of CITIZEN as yet...either IFC or Sundance had it in rotation relatively recently and I kept, as is too often the case, stumbling across it about ten or fifteen or forty-five minutes into it. I suppose I might look into one of them DVRs, but That's Cheating.
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