OT: In the mood to be scared?

With Halloween approaching, it's the best time of year to find some good horror movies on television. Several channels are running great movies, but I highly recommend AMC's lineup for a taste of the "new classics." They started Monsterfest on Oct. 22, actually, but the remaining lineup is promising:

The Howling
Psycho
Magic (with Anthony Hopkins, and so disquieting, I never finished it)
The Fog
The Exorcist and Exorcist II
Violent Midnight
Children of the Corn

And also various chapters in the Halloween series (none of which are worth your time after part II), and Alien, Friday the 13th and Hellraiser titles.

Also, the Fox Movie Channel is running a lot of older black-and-white: The Alligator People, The Undying Monster and more.

I'm going to try to sit through "Magic" this weekend.

Location, location, location

I rewatched "Vertigo" last night and was struck not so much by the story, which I found clever but ponderous, but by the importance given to the location. Rick, you mentioned that you like "Vertigo" because you like San Francisco, and that's a good reason to like it. The city is as much a character in the movie as Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. The location was one of the things I liked best about "The Lady Vanishes," too. Alpine, scenic. Storybookish and sinister. Cosmopolitan and provincial all at once, like San Francisco. And location was a big draw in "The Man Who Knew Too Much," too. Morocco and London. And the Americana of "Psycho." The French Riviera of "To Catch a Thief." On and on. And the locations are not just scenery. They're integral to the story.

I read this when I was looking up somethng about "Vertigo": According to Herbert Coleman, Vertigo's associate producer, Hitchcock often picked a location and then developed a story to be filmed there. He liked to show a familiar location and introduce a twist of malice. When he first saw San Francisco, he said it would be a good place for a murder mystery, and he chose a French novel, "D'Entre les Morts" (From Among the Dead).