X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) is a classic cosmic horror psychedelic parody Roger Corman mad scientist acid casualty and addiction groovy lounge music and experimental sound masterpiece of comedy terror and inverted American dream Vegas and sideshow apocalyptic guignol Lovecraftian scientific hubris Pathécolor pulp science fiction horror film produced and directed by Roger Corman, from a script by Ray Russell and Robert Dillon, and starring Ray Milland as a scientist who develops a method to extend the range of his vision, which results in unexpected complications, with Don Rickles, Diana Van der Vlis and veteran character actor Morris Ankrum.

The Red House (1947)

The Red House (1947) is a Delmer Daves genre-defying rural horror mystery film noir dark secret in the woods and dark secret in the past suspense thriller young love southern gothic and western guilt ridden disabled farmer rudimentary domestic adventure chiller suspenser with Edward G. Robinson, Lon McCallister, Judith Anderson, Rory Calhoun, Allene Roberts, Julie London, Ona Munson and Harry Shannon. 

The Black Sleep (1956)

The Black Sleep (1956) is a mad scientist body horror induced coma uneven but effective talky but entertaining veteran actor overlooked house of crazies Lugosi, Chaney and Carradine in a final reunion matters of the brain throwback marquee exploitation influential monstrous experiments independent horror film with the American reissue title Dr. Cadman's Secret produced by Bel Air Productions, directed by Reginald LeBorg, and written by John C. Higgins from a story by Gerald Drayson Adams. It stars Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Bela Lugosi, and Akim Tamiroff. Tor Johnson appears in a supporting role, produced by Aubrey Schenck and Howard W. Koch, as part of a four-picture finance-for-distribution arrangement with United Artists, and assembling human wreckage, failed patients, mutilated minds, and ruined legends.

The Beast with Five Fingers (1946)

The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) is a creepy euromad historical whodunnit mad pianist and body horror gothic wandering hand vintage special effect horror suspenser with the most unique and unusual music, and directed by Robert Florey and written by Curt Siodmak, and starring Andrea KIng, Robert Alda, Peter Lorre, J. Carrol Naish and Victor Francen, and though we may say whodunnit, when we know that it's the the hand that dunnit, the structure of the whodunnit does override the horror, with the Poirot-like detective making a bumbling but brave and coherent stab at solving the crazed mystery. 

The Strange Door (1951)

The Strange Door (1951) is a Joseph Pevney directed grand guignol gothic melodrama historical horror film noir women as chattels fantasy escapist historical nonsensical sensational portraits in film noir captive family member and psychopathic historical baron combination chiller-costume melodrama tale of madness, greed, insanity, revenge and loving heroism, starring Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, Sally Forrest and Richard Stapley, based on the short story The Sire de Maletroit's Door by Robert Louis Stevenson, and sometimes rolling with the alternative title of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Door (1951).

The Mummy's Tomb (1942)

The Mummy's Tomb (1942) is a Universal monster series early to mid forties Lon Chaney recyclathon gauzed menace archive footage filled fun filled shadow sequel mummy movie from Harold Young with Elyse Knox and Tuhran Bey and reprise roles with George Zucco, and Dick Foran, as well as Wallace Ford combined in a conceptual orientalist expression of North American longing for immortality combined with colonial guilt re-wiped and the use of the word 'occidentals' among other blundering culture and race jamming.

The Mummy's Hand (1940)

The Mummy's Hand (1940) is a fun flick follow up but not sequel Universal Classic Monsters US horror chiller mummy film directed by Christy Cabanne and produced by Ben Pivar, about the ancient Egyptian mummy of Kharis (played by Tom Tyler), who is kept alive with a brew of tana leaves by The High Priest (played by Eduardo Ciannelli) and his successor Andoheb (played by George Zucco), which used stock shots taken from The Mummy (1932), leftover sets from James Whale's film Green Hell (1940), and musical scores almost entirely lifted from Son of Frankenstein (1939). Wallace Ford and Cecil Kellaway play incredible acting roles keeping the show going, indeed this may even be a Kellaway classic. 

Dead of Night (1945)

Your every Basil Dearden season must include this delighting wonder of British forties filmation, a classic of several kinds and dear to all  Deardenians.

Dead of Night (1945) is a super classic anthology supernatural horror film noir themed portmanteau mixture of ghoulish spooky weird and comic misadventure with a framed narrative and fever pitched all time classic ventriloquist dummy anthology film in which the narratives spiral from spectral visitations to prophetic terror to outright, feral possession, each tale recounted by those who survived its ordeal. These confessions are bound together by a single, unsettling guest who claims an impossible intimacy with the house, the host, and the assembled company, recognizing them not from life but from a recurring nightmare he has endured relentlessly, a nightmare that has rehearsed this very gathering long before it came grotesquely true.

The Spider Woman (1943)

The Spider Woman (1943) is a Roy William Neill Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce 1940s era mid-war Sherlock Holmes serial movie series entry horror (?) film production and extremely rough adaptation serial killer and sleuthing light entertainment crime and detection film with various noirish aspects, and also starring as it does Gale Sondergaard and Dennis Hoey, may be one of the better items on the Holmes 1940s registry.

The Spider Woman (1943) occupies a curiously authoritative position within the Universal Studios Sherlock Holmes cycle, a position it did not reluctantly inherit but rather seized with a vigour that demands attention. So Holmes, so far. Curios and authoritative, we are fans and though this not be noir, it is still noir informed and noir informing, so give it credence.

She-Wolf of London (1946)

She-Wolf of London (1946) is a historic romantic foggy London lupine lycanthropic murder mystery police procedural women alone in a gothic mansion average film of mystery which certainly qualifies for film noir in many aspects and without offering too many spoilers, is also much within the paranoid woman genre, although which is somewhat blended in the not too wolfy mix — though don't go be expectin no monsters cuz there bain't be none I'm afraid.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is a classic Universal Monsters monster classic James Whale camp horror mad scientist angry torch-wielding mob driven queer coded Breen-positive historic recreational fantasy monster horror feature film sequel from the earliest most nascent era of screen creations both bestial in demeanour and possessed of a quasi-mythic savagery, marked by both vaudeville and a brutal, subhuman force, a movie which like its creatures, groans under the weight of its own deformity and beauty, respectively, with pile-driving feminist angst clashing misogynist tropery galore. 

The Return of the Fly (1959)

The Return of the Fly (1959) is a monster mad scientist shocker feature guinea pig hands and feet sequel effort from hell that is mild in noir relevance, so mild in noir relevance that the owners apologise, and here we argue that in fact this film's flyness and expected shock moments scientifically double effect a tale of industrial espionage, if indeed there is any hovering narrative to this atomic age sequel, and give it little reason to be here.

A minor creature, buzzing at the margin of the sublime, a mote in the cathedral of science, this film describes like no other the moment when the man and the insect pass through the molecular eye together, the universe commits a grammatical error, and republishes cheap. What emerges is not human, not fly, but a grotesque synthesis: the moral algebra of hubris incarnate. A catalogue entry in worst sequels?

The Uninvited (1944)

The Ray Milland Season Advances at a Crawl

The Uninvited (1944) is a supernatural clifftop haunted house, Cornish clifftop haunted house paranoid woman writer as hero portraits in noir gothic horror ghost chiller love and romance drama with a dog shot by Lewis Allen and starring Ray Milland, Gail Russell, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Alan Napier, and Cornelia Otis Skinner.

Few films of the 1940s reach the uncanny stillness and dignified unease as well as the fantastic silliness and dignified quease of The Uninvited (1944). 

Cry of the Werewolf (1944)

Cry of the Werewolf (1944) is a she-wolf werewolf cry of the Alsatian forties Romany-defacing uberwald supernatural proto horror lady lycanthrope darkened corridors-style thriller from the golden era of the classic film noir period of the silver screen, and although no noir to speak of, the crossover themes, designs and elements of the forties horror style and canon is so film noir adjacent that someone must appeal to the strain of horror to full understand the high standards of the film noir of the day, and it stars Nina Foch and Fritz Leiber, and was directed by Henry Levin.

Everything that we are seeing on these silver sets is a product of the formation of cinema, and the sets are the full epic of the era, hand built for thrills and lighting.

The Fly (1958)

The Fly (1958) is not a film noir. C'est pas un noir La Mouche.

The Fly (1958) is a classic nascent colour monster body horror early horror period monster thriller with legs, six legs in fact, all connected to its thorax, and those six legs are out of control science in the optimistic 1950s; gendered and queer multi-image vision of swarm politics; tragic pathos in the abject pursuit of individual destiny over marriage and family; a Lacanian mirror stage, gaze and castration anxiety Name-of-the-Father explosion of fear write large and technicolor; a biopolitics state of exception, killable life and mercy outside the law melodrama; a promissory technoscience, normal accident and precaution and public ethos thriller presentation; and a teen coming of age date and horror exploitation fantasy.

The Werewolf (1956)

The Werewolf (1956) is a seminal crossover lycanthrope amnesia and mad scientist nuclear threat horror from the film noir period, ultimately playing in the wilds but using darkened noir corners in a complementary manner while being to the appeal of the newer false fact teenage or juvenile younger moderate thriller hunter body transformation crowd of the 1950s.

The Werewolf (1956) yes, this is one of the odd mid noir early non horror kind of tragic costume wilderness wandering gunshot redneck get the mob with a raving wildfire of burning torches.

The Leopard Man (1943)

The Leopard Man (1943) is a Val Lewton Jacques Tourneur pre-serial killer era serial killer horror thriller chiller film noir filler large cat-themed dark side proto just about everything golden era silver screen classic of what became the horror genre, although it might be for another day to require of the LLMs to ask what the exact genre trajectory comprises that runs from Val and Jacques productions such as The Leopard Man (1943) and Cat People (1942) to Saw (2004); Saw II (2005); Saw III (2006); Saw IV (2007); Saw V (2008); Saw VI (2009); Saw 3D (2010); Jigsaw (2017); Spiral (2021); and Saw X (2023). 

Jeez I asked the LLM what it thought about that and guess what it was happy to spit. We will return to that.

Island of Doomed Men (1940)

Island of Doomed Men (1940) is an undercover cop prison exploitation lousy husband film noir adventure shocker about sadistic capitalistic island owner in conspiratorial league with the US prison system, who runs a mean slave labour based penal island where he keeps his wife a captive, and where he is bothered to his downfall by a domestic monkey.

Peter Lorre is that island owner in Island of Doomed Men (1940), the prosaically named Stephen Darnel who runs a mean slave colony, with a sophisticated home enclave of dreams, flowers, a kitchen, grand piano, electric fence and a domestic monkey.

Isle of the Dead (1942)

Isle of the Dead (1942) is an RKO Radio Pictures Val Lewton and Mark Robson Arnold Böcklin-inspired Boris Karloff historical Balkans War supernatural creeper mystery horror with Ellen Drew, Alan Napier, written by frequent Lewton collaborator Ardel Wray, it was the second of three films Lewton made with Karloff, and the fourth of five pictures Robson directed for Lewton.

The dead do not rest on Mark Robson's island. In Isle of the Dead (1945), what begins as a contemplation on the duties of command and the sanctity of reason unravels into a vision of mental collapse, buried trauma, and spiritual unease. 

The film, produced by Val Lewton and directed by Robson, engages its viewers in a paradox: its imagery evokes stillness, isolation, stasis, and yet its emotional and thematic resonances never cease to convulse. 

Invisible Agent (1942)

Invisible Agent (1942) is a Universal Monsters classic media franchise fake news erotic propaganda wartime horror comedy heroism anti-Axis adventure movie, charged with spookery, xenophobia, and not just a crazed fantasy of an invisible man behind enemy lines, but enemy lines behind which the Nazis and Japanese co-operate and compete as violent evil-doers.

The usual invisible man style of comedy is present and so of course he smokes a cigarette, as well as trying out some great new trick effects, such as changing out of his clothes mid air to land in 1942 Germany naked and invisible, as well as a cold cream application in order to reveal himself.