B&W or Colour?

[paranoid marvin]

In my opinion , the best horror films are those shot in B&W . Not only because , usually due to budget or technology , they generally relied more on the suggestion of scary things , rather than awful CGI footage or 'special effects' monsters , but also because B&W is inherently closer to real horror than colour.

After all , at night , and without adequate light - the time when we are usually most afraid - our vision is generally retricted to black & white or shdes of grey

Certainly in my view , with the exception of The Amityville Horror (original version) all of my favourite horror films were shot in B&W , including the one I love best , Night Of The Demon

[The Ace]

I love the atmosphere of B+W, but one thing really gets my goat;

Using a red filter to turn the sky black to simulate night, HELLO !! Did you ever see brilliant white clouds at night ?

[ravenus]

I like B/W as a way of shooting films, but there's no general truth that it makes for better (as in even better looking) horror films. Check out most of Romero's film other than Night of the Living Dead, and you'll find great horror in color. Check out any of Cronenberg's horror films. Dario Argento uses color with terrific results, even if his stories and characters are meh.


I'd say the classic horror archetype films do sometimes benefit from a B/W treatment (films like The Innocents are best in B/W), but then again, I rate Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill as highly in atmosphere as its B/W cousin Black Sunday so it's really a moot point. I think it all depends on the visual ideas that the makers have.

[j. d. worthington]

I'll agree with Ravenus on this; the Japanese horror films we've been seeing the last decade or so prove the point pretty well... they manage to produce an excellent atmosphere of menace and the otherworldly in color at least as well as black-and-white. The same can be said for Del Toro in such films as Pan' Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone, or Amenábar in The Others (or, for that matter, the film The Other (1972), from Tom Tryon's excellent novel). I'd also mention some of Fulci's films, especially The Beyond and The House of Clocks, which are both brutally graphic and highly atmospheric in their approach, and use the color palette very well to achieve a wide range of effects from the grotesquely comic to the horrifying to the eerie.

Which is not to say that black-and-white isn't an excellent choice for horror films -- some of my favorites, for instance, being Val Lewton's films, which certainly relied more on suggestion and adumbration rather than explicit statement... and sometimes simply on sound (think, for instance, of the chill delivered by that final moment of The 7th Victim); or Tourneur's film mentioned above (though I could have done without the actual visual of the demon at the end of the American version -- so, I understand, could Tourneur), which is a very good -- if somewhat loose in spots -- adaptation of M. R. James's "Casting the Runes"... or the original teleplay of Quatermass and the Pit, which is highly atmospheric.

In the end, as Ravenus says, it depends on the visual ideas the director and scenarist have; some do require black-and-white, others require color for full effect....

[HardScienceFan]

no mention of the original Cat People here?

JD?
by
uh

what'shisname,Frenchman
the miracle of Google
Jacques Tourneur

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by HardScienceFan

no mention of the original Cat People here?

JD?
by
uh

what'shisname,Frenchman
the miracle of Google
Jacques Tourneur

Ben... Cat People is one of the films put out by Val Lewton... hence, it falls under the ones I mentioned under his name; these also include Curse of the Cat People, Isle of the Dead, Ghost Ship, I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man, The Body Snatcher, and Bedlam.... Essentially, at that period, the producer directed the director, and Lewton taught Tourneur, Robson, and Wise how to direct a film... something they've all been more than happy to acknowledge. It was Lewton who insisted on the suggestion rather than blatant display (in large part because of budgetary restrictions, but also because he had the good sense to recall being told stories, and how much more effective they were at evoking your own terrors than anything that could be put on the screen....)

[ravenus]

Yep, Lewton was one of the most erudite people in the B-movie scene. He had an awesome sense of screenplay and dialog.

[HardScienceFan]

thanks peeps for teaching me the real deal
this place is educational
and then some

[Foxbat]

Originally Posted by ravenus

Yep, Lewton was one of the most erudite people in the B-movie scene. He had an awesome sense of screenplay and dialog.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the studio used to go to Lewton and tell him to make a film with a particular title. The fact that Lewton could then encompass this title (however dubious) within an intelligent and thought provoking script is all the more to his credit.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Foxbat

It's also worth keeping in mind that the studio used to go to Lewton and tell him to make a film with a particular title. The fact that Lewton could then encompass this title (however dubious) within an intelligent and thought provoking script is all the more to his credit.

Yes... as I understand it, the way it worked was this: they'd "market-test" a title, to see if audiences would go to see a film with that title. Then they'd come to Lewton, who had an agreement with them that (within budgetary limits), if he agreed to make a film around that title, he had complete artistic freedom. They agreed, and he made these films, all for very low budgets, and all of them more than made their money back... and are now considered among the classics of the genre, because of their imaginative use of suggestion, light and shadow, sound, etc.... Which is how you ended up with excellent, quiet little suspense/horror films with titles such as I Walked with a Zombie (which is essentially a retelling of Jane Eyre in the West Indies) and Curse of the Cat People -- which is really not a horror film (though there are some suspenseful moments in it) so much as one of the most poignant, powerful examinations of the imaginative world of "special" or "gifted" children done to date -- a beautiful film that I can't recommend highly enough, and one heck of a beginning to Robert Wise's career....

[mosaix]

Repulsion staring Ian Hendry and Catherine Deneuve, shot in black and White. Not exactly a horror movie but that didn't stop it scaring the pants off me. Black and white just made that film.