Anyone else here a big fan? Val Lewton was the man responsible for such thrillers as the classic, original "Cat People" (since remade to disatrous effects by Paul Schraeder and rumoured to be in development for Jada Pinkett-Smith - God NO!), "The Body Snatchers", "I Walked with a Zombie","The Seventh Victim" and "Bedlam". Most modern horror films (at least try to) draw influences from the 'less is more' fashion of these movies. Directors who have worked for Lewton at RKO include Jacques Tourneur (Night of the Demon) and Robert Wise (The Haunting)... If you haven't seen any of the above, you should really try to track them down....
I've seen both "Night of the Demon" and "The Haunting" and loved them. (Ring was the first film that really frightened me since "The Haunting." ) Sadly I have never seen either version of "Cat People" but Ia small part of the wonderful Kirk Douglas film "The Bad and the Beautiful" contained a wonderful send-up of the making of "Cat People."
No true horror fan should be without a few Val Lewton films having been a life long fan of horror movies his films allways seemed above par.....with classics like Cat People (42) Curse of the Cat People (44) I Walked with a Zombie (43) & Bedlam (46).... ....up untill you wrote this thread and I looked up the dates for his films I thought he directed Creature from the Black Lagoon but it was from Jack Arnold
Gahh, I just wrote a really long post about Lewton and his movies and was about done with it when i accidentally pressed this button on my mouse that goes one page back and I totally lost everything :evil: Damn my f**cking computer! Anyways, since I don't feel like rewriting the entire post I'll just say that I recently got a box set of Lewton's 9 horror films and also contained two documentaries about him (one of them narrated by Martin Scorcese), and while I haven't watched all of the movies yet he must've been such a brilliant man- his movies have a feel of elegance and class that's really hard to find in horror films today, which is perhaps why I watch them so often. He's best known for Cat People, which is a really well-made and subtle gem, but my favorite of his is I Walked With a Zombie, which despite the B-list title is a classic of the genre and still managed to scare the crap out of me, even about 66 years after it was made. His films are classics and up until the beginning of the millenium were almost totally forgotten about, but his name and work have been rediscovered and as a result his books and short stories are also being released (which I'd like to get my hands on). Amazon has "The Val Lewton Horror Collection" with the two added documentaries for about 43 USD, which is pretty cheap considering it's a collection of six dvds here. I highly recommend the set, his work is a must-have for every fan of classic horror, or for fans of just good cinema in general Any other Lewton fans here?
I have to admit I've never seen a single one of his films I adore Wise's The Haunting, so I probably should check him out Btw, can I ask why KK is listed under 'actors' on the Amazon page...? :dizzy: Does he offer some kind of punditry in the documentary?
That totally slipped my eye- I haven't watched the documentaries yet because they talk about each movie in length and I haven't finished all the movies yet, but according to imdb he's in the 2nd documentary Val Lewton: The Man in Shadows as an "interviewee" 8O Wow, I totally missed that. Crazy, I tell you, I had no idea he's a fan of Lewton!
He seems to like a lot of old horror flicks - I remember reading somewhere or other that his favourite movie was Mill of the Stone Women Let us know how his bit is when you've seen it Ichi-kun!
K. Kurosawa in a Val Lewton Documentary ...So I finally finished all the movies in the set, and watched the documentary Val Lewton: Man in the Shadows, and yes, Kiyoshi Kurosawa does appear as an interviewee! He basically gives his opinion and input on Lewton's filmmaking techniques and how the use of shadow and light, and other visual elements influenced his filmmaking. He admits something about how Lewton's juxtaposition of light and dark "as a director, drives me crazy". I'm not kidding :-P His segments do appear often, and it's quite interesting to hear what he thinks of the great man. And just a plug for Lewton's films- they're absolutely fantastic, beautiful and haunting works that are forgotten classics in their own right and in the traditional sense. They're lyrically poetic, and still have it in them to scare any modern audiences. A must for any horrorfan. Order the boxset now! :-D
For anyone interested in Lewton, there are a number of books which go into his life and work in some detail. 'Fearing the Dark' is one of the best. The new boxset contains the Scorcese documentary, but the earlier edition (which I bought to replace my moldy, worn-out VHS copies which were extremely hard to come by back in the '80s, let me tell you!) had a different documentary, 'Shadows in the Dark'. Both are worth having, I think. I can't recall if this is mentioned on either of the documentaries, but Lewton had a short story, 'The Bagheeta', published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in the '30s. It's a good story, and will be of interest to anyone who loves his work (particularly Cat People).
