What an agreeable moment it used to be in horror films when the heroine arose from her bed in the old castle where she was staying the weekend and throwing a negligée over her nightdress began to wander with hypnotised stealth along the dark corridor. The camera and soundtrack dwelt for some minutes on the manifestations attending this rash pilgrimage - now a motionless suit of armour revealed by the moonlight, now the cry of an owl outside the casement - but nothing more spectral occured until ... Invariably and with tremulous curiosity she opened the fatal door with a sepulchral creak; her hand flies to her lips and her eyes widen into blue saucers. A piercingly satisfying scream sometimes followed, sometimes not: and usually, in adroit anti-climax, the camera tracked to the smiling features of Vincent Price or Boris Karloff, dapper in antique costume or Victorian evening wear, surveying her discomfiture with sinister benevolence.

LRB 9 April 1992 | PDF Download