1960’s

[2] Peter Cushing stars in this Amicus production about a collector of supernatural antiquities who comes into possession of the Marquis de Sade’s skull. Christopher Lee (in a cameo) warns him that the skull has the power to possess its owners and force them to do evil things. Cushing poo-poos the notion at his peril and ends up fighting the skull’s intentions for him to …

[8] A paranormal investigator (Richard Johnson) invites three others to stay with him at a ninety-year-old mansion to determine whether it is haunted. One of his guests is a skeptic (Russ Tamblyn) who will one day inherit the house, while another (Claire Bloom) is a clairvoyant. But it’s the third guest (Julie Harris) who has the strongest and most unsettling connection to the property — …

[8] Tension between rival New York City gangs the Jets and the Sharks is wound to a tragic snapping point after one young Jet falls head over heels for the sister of the Sharks’ leader. West Side Story is based on the landmark stage musical featuring music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and exciting dance choreography by Jerome Robbins, who co-directs this film …

[8] An associate History professor (Richard Burton) and his wife, the university president’s daughter (Elizabeth Taylor), invite a new biology faculty member (George Segal) and his wife (Sandy Dennis) to their house for drinks. But the evening goes hellishly south when the older couple begin airing marital grievances, including the whereabouts of their son on the eve of his sixteenth birthday. By sunrise, nasty games …

[4] Cliff Robertson stars as Charly, a mentally disabled man who agrees to have an experimental operation that makes him more intelligent. But just as the experiment’s success is announced to the scientific world, Charly learns he will soon regress to his original state. Robertson gives an fairly effective performance here, but Charly, based on the required junior high school reading title, Flowers for Algernon, …

[6] Robert Redford and Natalie Wood headline this Tennessee Williams tale adapted by Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Sydney Pollack. Redford plays a railroad representative who comes to a small Mississippi town during the Great Depression to lay off several of the company’s workers. Despite being the bearer of bad news, Redford develops feelings for the local innkeeper’s daughter (Wood), whose mother is essentially …

[8] A surgeon kidnaps young women and removes their faces in hopes of successfully transplanting one on his horribly disfigured daughter in Eyes Without a Face. Released the same season as Hitchcock’s Psycho and years before Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, this French film from Georges Franju has earned an interesting place on the timeline of horror film history. Coming after decades of supernatural …

[7] Doris Day stars as a recently married woman who gets lost in the London fog one afternoon. A mysterious voice threatens her life in that mist, and later makes a series of nasty phone calls to her. The caller threatens in a high voice that she’ll be dead inside a month, but as the calls keep coming, everyone begins to think she’s making the …

[7] Michael Powell (The Red Shoes) directs this British giallo flick about a photographer whose ghastly hobby is stalking young women and filming their expressions as he murders them. You could say that Peeping Tom is an early slasher film, the genre that would beget Michael Myers, Fred Krueger, and Jason Voorhees. But it’s actually a much more psychological endeavor — and more impactful for …

[4] Vincent Price stars as a French magistrate who becomes possessed by a murderous spirit that jumps from person to person, forcing them to carry out its bidding. When Price’s character begins to fall in love with a married posing model (Nancy Kovack), the spirit commands him to kill the woman’s husband. Price’s attempts to outwit the spirit become his undoing in a tragic third …

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