Just In Time For Halloween...Best Val Lewton Horror Film

Been celebrating my favourite month/holiday of the year by watching these, and thus won't be casting my vote til I'm through them all. Let's hear your choices!

"Cat People," but I think of that more as a Jacques Tourneur film. Just as I think of "Night of the Demon" as a Val Lewton production! So ... "Night of the Demon?"

Oooh Seventh Victim or Body Snatcher, love them both.

Love them all really.

Cat People ftw, but Body Snatcher and Isle of the Dead are excellent too.

I think Seventh Victim is generally considered the best (?) but I'm throwing my vote to I Walked With a Zombie.

Seventh Victim vs. Curse of the Cat People. I think I'm going to vote for the latter.

but that's the least horrorful, you old softie!

nice timing, the netflix disc of the seventh victim w/the shadows in the dark doc is in my mailbox at home right now!

I'd vote for Night of the Demon, too (wrote a paper on it in university); from the three I've seen on the list, Zombie.

I love Curse for many of the same reasons I love Night of the Hunter. It doesn't read as "horror" as well to those who didn't enjoy the thrill of horror as kids.

Posting at work, easily distracted...Night of the Demon's Tourneur, right; Lewton wasn't even involved at that point, was he? (I taped that Kent Jones/Scorsese documentary from a couple of years ago, but still haven't watched it.)

Yeah, no Lewton involvement with "Curse/Night," but it still fits right in. And it's total horror! Ask Sam "Drag Me to Hell" Raimi.

I love Curse for many of the same reasons I love Night of the Hunter. It doesn't read as "horror" as well to those who didn't enjoy the thrill of horror as kids.

― michael assbender (Eric H.), Thursday, October 13, 2011 1:40 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

Kept trying to think of what movie Curse was reminding me of while watching it (Pan's Labyrinth? Let The Right One In?) and there it is right there. Extra humiliating since NOTH is my #3 fave film of all time.

Curse is indeed a masterpiece, btw. I'm only through the first four films in the box, and I can't really see it being topped.

TOUGHIE.

Opting for Seventh Victim, just 'cuz there are ain't that many films as uniquely depressing.

I have only seen "Cat People" and "Curse of teh Cat People", of which the former is the best. So I have voted for that.

I really find it hard to believe that anyone prefers Curse to the original Cat People film.

There's a lot to like in Cat People, but I guess I find it to be more of an "intellectual" (for lack of a better word) exercise than Curse. The dangers of unleashed female sexuality and all that. Maybe if I'd taken less critical theory in school I wouldn't be so tired of thinking of things (and horror films in particular, it seems) in these terms. The scene in the pool and the stalking scene interrupted by the shrieking bus, though? All that is fantastic.

Curse is a lot more dreamlike and thus a more direct and potent experience for me, I guess.

several of these airing on tcm on saturday the 29th

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.