Those films all focused on ritualistic killers.
After 1960, the major studios reverted back to safer horrors involving ghosts.
And the prestigious directors made psychological horrors.
By 1968, the American Production Code had ended.
And the bloody gates were open.
Shes buried alongside her lover in a crypt.
Image via Unidis
Franju was obviously a lover of the moving image.
Franjus eerie film follows a plastic surgeon that specializes in transplanting living skin tissue from one person to another.
Meanwhile, his daughter awaits a new face behind a white mask, eerily ghost-like.
With a picture you retain control of your fantasy.
With a motion picture, someone else has control of the imagination and you just watch.
‘Psycho’ (1960)
Alfred HitchcocksPsychois the big kahuna of this list.
Image via Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distibutors
Its one of the most perfect moments in all of cinema.
But as standalone amazing that sequence is, the rest of the film is equally terrific.
Our heroes and heroines and villains dont need to be with us every step of the way.
Psychois a pure flex of the film muscle.
Both narratively and visually, this ghost tale is about what we do in the shadows.
They peck through the walls, their beaks poking through like a Whack-a-Mole game.
Image via 20th Century Fox
Theres a spooky mansion with handed down tales of hauntings, death and insanity.
Is the house on the hill actually haunted?
Or does being told that its haunted play tricks on everyone inside?
Blood and Black Laces setting is a fashion house where models are being murdered.
Structurally, the stories are very similar.
They both begin with a violent act.
But whileBaby Janehad shrilly-laudable camp moments,Charlottemakes everything more refined and gothic.
The meat cleaver murder ofBruce Dernis certainly one of the most graphic moments in film of that time period.
He loses a limb before another blow is delivered.
Baby Janewas a hoot.Sweet Charlotteis more Grand Guignol, with magnolia tree shadows, ghosts, and severed limbs.
One is camp, the other is high camp.
Appropriately enough, the term camp first came into fruition in 1964, in an essay bySusan Sontag.
Theres a sense inRepulsionthat no one has control of his or her mind.
She’s paralyzed and near mute by these visions.
Polanski films most of her psychological breakdowns while she wears a near sheer nightie.
Image via Compton Films
