My own choices for a first-time horror viewer would take into account the possibility of said viewer's squeamishness at excessive blood and gore, which seems to be all modern horror films are capable of anymore, and my own view that the finest examples of the genre turned upon literate scripts which play to the psychological dimensions of gothic horror: using tension and misdirection to create terror in the mind of the viewer. And from my own experience, there are four fine movies which embody these qualities of truly intelligent as well as entertaining genre cinema:
The Masque Of The Red Death (1964) is a prime example. I have already expounded at length upon the psychological dimensions of this true classic, the finest of the eight Edgar Allen Poe adaptations produced and directed by Roger Corman and most starring Vincent Price, who became a pop-culture icon and an immortal through his transition to science fiction and horror performances. In this entry and perhaps playing the best role in his career, Price is the suavely evil Prince Prospero, a Satanist who stages his annual bal-masque for his rich and titled friends at his castle. It is also the time of the Red Death, a virulent plague which periodically ravages the countryside. Prospero, for the amusement of his guests and, increasingly, to satisfy his own fascination, kidnaps a young and innocent peasant girl, Francesca (Jane Asher), from the nearby village with the aim of seducing and corrupting her into the worship of the Fallen Angel. But Death (John Westbrook) has marked Prospero and all within his sanctuary for doom. Despite two gruesome scenes which are over with in less than a minute each, this movie —like the rest of Corman's Poe-cycle films— created horror by suggestion and played with the minds of the audience. There is almost nothing supernatural in the whole of the movie except for Death himself, and he takes on the aspect of an allegorical character rather than a supernatural agent. Masque is also one of the most philosophical horror films ever made, examining the nature of man at length in both aspects of good and evil.
House Of Usher (1960) was the first of Corman's Poe-cycle movies and the one which sold the formula for this series: employing tight and well-plotted storytelling, superb acting from a small cast, and the use of at least one hallucinatory dream sequence achieved with rather simple photographic trickery, to convey horror and also make up for very thin budgets (which were never a challenge to the endlessly canny Corman). In this movie, the house itself is cursed: a repository of all the evil committed by the Usher ancestors —generations of irredeemable villains— until only two remain and the house now crumbling and in danger of imminent collapse. Vincent Price in this film is Roderick Usher, the last patriarch of the line, who is determined that the Usher family shall become extinct at long last. Roderick strongly objects to Phillip Winthrop's (Mark Damon) love for his ailing sister Madelyn (Myrna Fahey) and plans to marry her; a prospect which horrifies Roderick as it will inevitably lead to more Ushers in the world to carry the family evil through succeeding generations and prompts him to the most extreme measures to ensure the marriage will never happen. Roderick is, technically, the villain in this piece due to his adamant opposition to the romantic aspirations of Mr. Winthrop and his sister as well as his obsession for bringing down the end of the Usher line, but he is not the evil one in this story. His reasons are very real to him, as he tries to explain to the skeptical Winthrop, and in the end he falls victim to the family curse. Throughout the whole photoplay, the evil of the house is merely suggested both by word and by the steady shifting of the structure upon its increasingly unstable foundations. The whole Usher legacy is about to be swallowed up forever into the tarn in which it was built, in the middle of poisoned land, and doom overhangs everyone within.
The theme of the cursed house is central to the next two selections and is stated outright in the scripts to be fact: The Haunting (1963) features a group of paranormal investigators who are determined to make contact with the spirits inhabiting Hill House, which has a history of tragedy ever since the wife of Hugh Crain, who built the mansion for her, died in a carriage accident on the grounds of the estate ninety years previous. Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) leads a group of psychics to the house, with young heir to the estate Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn) in tow along with a disturbed, guilt-ridden woman, Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris), who experienced poltergeist activity before in her life. Sanderson is the cynic of the group, dismissing any suggestion of the supernatural, until events lead to the tragic moment when the house "claims" Eleanor as its own. This brilliant film, produced and directed by Robert Wise and adapted from the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting Of Hill House, again turns wholly upon psychological effect and leaves the issue of supernatural happenings very ambiguous.
Last and certainly not least in this tableaux is 1973's The Legend Of Hell House, a superb British low-budget production adapted from the novel Hell House by veteran genre-author Richard Matheson (who also penned the screenplay for House Of Usher). An eccentric millionaire who recently bought the infamous Belasko House commissions physicist Lionel Barrett (Clive Reville) to thoroughly investigate the house for any signs of poltergeist activity. Barrett uses the opportunity to test his theory of an electromagnetic forcefield basis for so-called poltergeist energy and brings up elaborate equipment designed to drain it to nothing. Leading a team of parapsychologists and mediums, the relentlessly rational Barrett also has in tow his wife and the claravoyant Benjamin Franklin Fischer (Roddy McDowell), the sole survivor of the last expedition to go into Belasko House; now returning to settle an old score with whatever forces inhabit the mansion.
Any one of these films would be a perfect introduction for the unexperienced viewer to what horror cinema at its best is all about. All were relatively low-budget efforts but stylish, well-acted, well-paced, with cinematography which advances the plot visually and, far more importantly, are literate. Movies which employ suggestion to create terror through slow-building tension, raising the expectation of something horrible happening with each passing moment. And in their finer moments, also laying bare the baser human desires and human weaknesses —the wellspring from which true evil arises.
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