Midnight Ride (released in 1990) - Thriller movie starring Mark Hamill, Michael Dudikoff, Savina Gersak, and Robert Mitchum

A rough ride, this slasher cum thriller film directed by Bob Bralver - is more of a hit and miss film - it wanted to score a hit with the audiences, but landed a miss :-). The film opens with Justin McKay (played by Mark Hamill, who also did Star Wars) at a car rental, where he is giving travel details – he’d like to rent a car to Hendersonville, when asked to fill in the rental contract form, he tells the attendant that he has no credit card, she tells him that he would then be unable to get the car – he crumples the form and throws it on her face- ‘Keep your stupid car.’
The scenes switches to a housewife, Lara (Savina Gersak), a Russian immigrant – who walks out of the house and her husband Lawson (Michael Dudikoff), her reasons are genuine, though somewhat clichéd and commonplace: he pays more attention to his job than her. “I just wanna leave, be swallowed up… ’. As she drives away, her mind a riot of emotions and thoughts - she thinks of spending the night with her friend at Santa Barbara. But there’s a bad thing waiting to happen to her: she offers a lift to Justin McKay, feeling sorry for him because he tells her he’s missed his bus home.
At a police check point, they are informed they have to take a detour, Lara tells the policeman that she and her ‘brother’ are traveling together. As they pull away, Justin remarks that she reminds him of his sister, whom he liked very much. Unbeknownst to Lara, her husband is following her, as he places his car in her way, she is taken aback and bumps into it. Getting out, she realizes its Lawson, this angers her further and she pulls away again. Lawson radios for help, meanwhile Hamill wonders why he was following them, and Lara tells him he’s her husband. When she pulls over at a motel to make a call, the lady at the desk is particularly rude and arrogant - this peeves Justin,  who says he doesn’t like her because she has a fake eye. While Lara waits her turn at the phone booth, he walks into the reception, the woman asks him what he wants - he points at her eye- ‘I want that.’




Viewers are given a macabre glimpse of  the woman’s corpse, with her eye missing. Lara is none the wiser. Justin shares with Lara the purpose of his visit to Hendersonville - ‘to meet an old professor, he makes me feel good.’ She notices he’s weaving thread or something, he tells her it’s a present for her. Suddenly, he dangles the necklace before her - the motel lady’s glass eye decorated as a pendant - Lara rams the brakes and asks Justin to get out, he tells her she doesn’t mean that - he wants her to like him! He threatens her, and she promises not to bother him or make an attempt to leave. Justin asks her who she is and why she left her husband. Meanwhile Lawson goes over to a colleague’s place to borrow his car. The trail seems to have gone cold, but he persists and is on the road to trace the car.
Leaving a trail of blood and gore, killing fourteen people, including six policemen - the duo travels on. Ultimately, Justin halts at a hospital, his intentions are insane - he  wants Dr.Hardy (played by Robert Mitchum), his psychiatrist, to administer electric shocks, not to him, but to Lara so that she likes him.
The doctor is familiar with Hamill’s history: he was witness to the terrifying butchering of his little sister by their alcoholic mother, thus the doctor knows that Mark is easily offended when he feels disrespected or let down. Hamill ignores the doctor and zaps Lara with the intention of killing her - Lawson arrives just in time and saves her. In the fighting that ensues, Justin is electrocuted and dies. All’s well that ends well- our hero reunites with his lady love and the two will hopefully live happily ever after - as for the audience, can’t say the same after eighty eight minutes of torturous viewing!

What lies beneath (released in 2000) - A supernatural thriller starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford - a big hit

This movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford was one of the biggest hits of the year. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis and was highly influenced by Hitchcockian movies.
The movie starts with the troubles of Claire and Norman a well-to- do couple who move to Vermont. After her daughters departure for college Claire who suffers from memory lapses start feeling uneasy at their home. She spies one of their neighbors Warren dragging a heavy body bag and concludes that he has murdered his wife Mary. Claire confronts and accuses Warren of murder and is in turn proved false when Mary is found alive in the house. Norman, Claire's husband, a distinguished professor thinks that Claire is going senile.
Unconvinced Claire conducts a séance to channel the spirit with her friend. Soon mysterious things starts happening in her house, like things falling down, the doors slamming etc. Claire finds a missing report of Madison Frank behind one of the picture frames. She visits Madison's mother and finds out that Madison was Norman's student int the university. She comes back with a lock of Madison's hair and performs a ritual to allow the spirit to possess her. A possessed Claire seduces Norman and during the act he sees the change in her appearance. A scared Norman pushes Claire which makes her loose contact with the spirit. Slowly Claire's memory returns and she remembers her husband's affair with Madison.



Norman confesses of the affair; telling Claire that he told Madison her that he loved Claire very much and could not leave her for Madison. This forced the unstable Madison to commit suicide. Norman says that he had seen her corpse with a letter written to Claire which was burnt by him. He also acknowledges of pushing the body in to the lake to make it disappear. Claire asks him to confess everything to the authorities. Norman pretends to do so and is found out.
To get rid of Claire Norman gags and places her in the tub and fill sit up with water to facilitate her drowning. He leans forward to give her a kiss that Claire's face morphs in to Madison's corpse like face. A scared Norman hits his head on the mirror and is rendered unconscious. Claire escapes in her car to reach the authorities. Norman follows her and forces her car in to the lake where he had pushed Madison's body.
As they struggle to get out of the lake Norman Grabs Claire's legs to prevent her from escaping. But Madison's ghost appear to drag Norman down allowing Claire to surface. She escapes and Norman is drowned to pay for his sins. Claire pays her respects at Madison's grave and leaves for a new life.
This movie is so highly influenced by Hitchcock's dramatization that the critics have drawn several parallels to Hitchcock's various movies. This film was the first film for Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as a pair. Harrison Ford has gone on record saying that Michelle Pfeiffer's presence was the motivating factor for his signing the film. The movie went on to become the block buster of 2000. A good spooky horror movie for all.

Night of the Hunter (1955): The psychotic horror

Horror is not only about things that creak in the night, or about other such stuff that is tried to scare you. The concept of a crazed human being, who otherwise looks perfectly normal, and who kills and terrorises others, can be very scary. Especially, when this is done by someone who takes their time over this, willing to wait for a certain period of time before carrying out their mission. No matter that it takes time, the mission is uppermost in the mind of this individual, and he or she does not care about the feelings of others, or that if necessary, other human beings can be killed.
The Night of the Hunter is a movie acknowledged to be a 'film noir' movie, although there are people who absolutely love the movie, and there are others who cannot understand why the movie is so liked; after all, the characters are not really daily life, the story may not be so plausible, and the acting is considered by some to be over-done.



When the movie was released, it was not met with rapture by critics, but over a period of 4 decades, the movie has been shown on Television multiple times, and has acquired a cult following (to the extent that the movie is now believed to be a top 100 movie; it is also regularly listed among the most scary movies of all time). The movie was directed by a one-time director, Charles Laughton, who was much more famous as a Academy Award winning actor, and screen-writer. The movie stars Robert Mitchum in the main role as the demented killer.
Night of the Hunter was based on a book of the same name by author David Grubb, and both were based on the real life story of Harry Powers (executed in 1932 for being the main accused in the murder of 2 women and 3 children). The story was powerful, but the style of the movie - it combines religious overdone, a Brothers Grimm type fairy tale in the middle, and a stalker who is most ruthless.
The movie is about the self-styled preacher, Harry Powell (Mitchum) who is sharing a prison cell with a man Ben Harper (Peter Graves) who is sentenced to hang for his part in a robbery in which killings happened. He alone knows where the money is hidden, and only tells his children (John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce)) where the money is located. He does not tell anyone else, not even his wife. Powell tries to get Harper to tell him where the money is located, but no dice; however he does get an elusive clue from Harper in the manner of a quote uttered in sleep "And a child shall lead them". This is enough to convince Powell that the children know where the money is located.
Once he is out, there is a single minded quest to get the money, and to be near the children, he manages to get Harper's widow Willa to marry him. However, even on questioning, the children do not trust him and do not tell him anything. Willa eventually finds out, and Powell then kills her. After Willa, Powell uses threat and manages to get them to tell him the location, but then escape with the money on a boat ride (a most fantastic ride) and find sanctuary with Rachel Cooper (Lilian Gish). Powell searches for them, and finds Rachel, but she manages to hold him off, and then the police arrive.

Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece

Psycho (released in 1960) was arguably Alfred Hitchcock's most famous movie, and acknowledged as one of the best movies of all times. The movie set new standards in the field of horror movies, something that slasher movies later have found it difficult to emulate. This was also a movie that Alfred Hitchcock wanted to use to establish his reputation, especially when 'Vertigo' had failed 2 years earlier (neither the critics nor the audience gave it much of a reception); and the story of a murderer (a novel by Peter Bloch) was something that appealed to him. He had not made such a movie in the past, although he had made his name in suspense, and the making of a movie of the genre of a psychotic murderer would be a different movie.


To that extent, the story of Psycho was something that Hitchcock guarded to a very high degree. Even the film rights to the novel were bought under a different name so that viewers would not guess the twists in the story. This quest for secrecy manifested itself in several different ways. Hitchcock forbade most promotion on the usual media - television, radio, and print interviews so that there was no fear of revealing the truth. In addition, critics were not allowed the usual private screenings, but had to see the movie with the general public, so that the plot remained secret (even though preventing the critics from their screenings might cause reviews to be not so positive).
The movie also struggled on a different front. The studio for which Hitchcock was supposed to make another movie, Paramount, was not happy with the script or with the thought of Hitchcock making this movie. They did not believe that the script was suitable for a movie, and in fact, such a movie was essentially a pet peeve for Hitchcock. Accordingly, his usual budget was denied, causing Hitchcock to raise money on his own and cut costs. He hired his regular staff, managed to get the lead star Janet Leigh for much less than her regular fee; the overall budget was less than a million dollars.
The movie was reviewed poorly by critics, but turned out to be a major commercial success, earning some $32 million overall. Since the movie was produced by Hitchcock's company, his share of the profits was much greater than one would have expected otherwise. The success of the movie led critics to change their views, do a re-review, and the movie earned a total of 4 Oscar nominations.
The movie is a gripping psycho drama, with a shower murder scene that is one of the most famous scenes ever; this scene has been copied and parodied many times. There has been countless research done over the decades to evaluate as to why the scene has had such an impact to users; as an aside, it has been popular lore that the scene impacted the actress Janet Leigh so much that she found it difficult to take a shower after that.
The movie is set in a out-of-the-way motel called Bates motel. It is run by the young man called Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who lives with his ailing mother. And who arrives to this motel ? The lady on the run, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh). She is in love with Sam Loomis (John Gavin), but both of them do not have much money. They are in dire need of money since Sam is in debt and also has alimony payments to an wx-wife that are ongoing. Marion steals $40,000 from the office in Phoenix, Arizona that she works in (she is asked to deposit the money in the bank, but she runs off with the money), and wants to drive to the town in California where Sam works.
She is suspicious, wondering about whether the police is after her; in this state, she even changes her car to try to throw pursuers off her track. In this state, she finds a motel on the way, and is persuaded to stay there. She finds Norman Bates a bit strange, but nothing prepares her for her end. When she is showering in her motel room, an apparently elderly woman attacks her and is stabbed to death (with a powerful musical score playing in the background).
Norman finds the corpse of Marion, and in order to protect his mother, he dumps Marion and all her belongings (including the car) into a nearby swamp. However, it is not the end; a private detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) is hired to find Norman. He manages to find the Bates motel, and starts to question Norman who gets all nervous. He meets the same end as Marion, being slashed to death by Norman's mother after being pushed down the stairs. When Milton does not report back, Marion's mother Lila and Sam get concerned and contact the sheriff. When the sheriff is told about Norman's mother, he is surprised since Norman's mother had died 10 years back.
Sam and Lila investigate further, and slip into the motel. They find a slip of paper talking about the money that Marion was carrying ($40,000), and so decide to confront Norman's mother. Lila is tasked with talking to the mother, while Sam would divert Norman. However, Norman soon has a fight with Sam and knocks him out; Lila is shocked when she discovers the preserved body of Norman's mother; and the secret is out - Norman is wearing his mother's clothes when he comes with a knife to kill Lila. Sam arrives just in time and knocks Norman out.
In the end, a psychiatrist explains the truth; Norman and his mother lived together with no one else. So when Norman's mother took a lover, Norman killed them both, and then tried to erase the guilt by preserving her body, and acting as her (in a classic case of split personality). In this reverse state, the split personality is jealous of any woman to whom Norman comes in touch with, and kills such a women. His psychosis prevents him from realizing the enormity of his crimes. Norman lands up in a cell, his mind dominated by his mother. In this alter ego, she believes that she is harmless and Normal is responsible for her current state.

Schindler's List (2003)

Few people who have seen the movie can forget the experiences and depth to which humanity can sink (and rise). For people who are not so aware of what the Holocaust was about, or about the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jews (and on Russians, Homosexuals, Gypsies, and others), the movie brought details in great detail. Using Black & White almost throughout the movie somehow seemed to convey scenes of horror and despair more brutally and clearly.
The film was first offered to Martin Scorcese, and then Roman Polanksi, but then it came to Steven Spielberg, for whom this sort of movie was very different. Steve Spielberg was already known as a gifted and accomplished director, but his movies were more thrillers or science oriented movies (such as Jaws, ET, Indian Jones, Close Encounters of the Third Kind); and here was this subject (based on the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally) about the Holocaust and the genocide directed by the Nazis, primarily at the Jewish population of Europe.



It is calculated that the 'Final Solution' propounded by the Nazis (Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann, etc) in the early stages of the War killed 6 million Jews in Europe during the course of the war. The Nazis were very systematic and documented everything that they did, and their solution of identifying Jews, separating from the rest of the population, and the concentration camps (that used industrial efficiency mass gas chambers) were a solution for mass murder that humankind was not able to visualize. Even though Western Europe and America knew that Jews were being victimized, the level of killings became known only when the concentration camps were over-run by Russian and American soldiers after the fall of the Nazis, and the true story came to light.
In the midst of this state-directed terror where the civilian population mostly stood by and let mass-murder happen (and Europe had gone through repeated bursts of anti-semitism including mass pogroms in Russia), there are stories of people who shed their normal beliefs and played heroic parts in saving people. One of them was Oskar Schindler. His role in saving around 1,100 Jews from being murdered was recognized and he was in fact feted in Israel in 1958, but the story was never very famous. And then came this movie. The movie did not shy away from presenting his negative points; he was a womanizer and unfaithful to his wife, he did not shirk away from setting up his factory using funds almost forced from the rich Jews who had been forced to live in the ghettos, he exploited Jewish workers, he bribed his way through the Nazi machinery; but all those are human weaknesses when compared with the super-human role he played in bribing the Nazi machinery in order to save 1,100 Jews by getting them employed in his factory. He fought for each worker, sometimes going to great distances to save them when they were mistakenly taken away. At some point during the killings, the impact of the genocide made him a person who was determined to use his cleverness and guile to save people.
And it is this portrayal of a complex person, but one who eventually spent everything he had in order to save people that makes this a great movie. Schindler's List was both critically acclaimed and a commercial success. The movie earned over $320 million compared to the $25 million that was spent, and also earned the movie 7 Oscars including the most important ones - Best Picture and Best Director. The 2 great performances of the movie - Liam Neeson playing Oskar Schindler and Ralph Fiennes playing the brutal SS officer Amon Goth (later caught after the war and hanged for crimes against humanity) were both nominated for Academy Awards, but did not win.
The movie is essentially about Oskar Schindler, out to make an opportunity from the war effort. He sees that war will need supplies, and he proposes to supply crockery to the army; with funding and labour from the oppressed Jews. Through a measure of drinking and fraternizing with the Nazis, he succeeds in getting started; he is not great at running his business but has some excellent support from Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley in a fine role) who is a gifted accountant. Running parallel is the horror story of the German Army marching through Poland, defeating the Polish Army within 2 weeks, and starting the first steps of the repression and murder (ordering the Jewish community to assemble in major cities such as Krakow and live in ghettos from where they will soon be marched off to concentration camps) that will become to be known as the 'Holocaust'. Getting papers stamped with a certificate of being an 'essential' worker will save a person, and that is what Schindler promises.
You see Schindler weaving in between the Nazi machinery, using a mixture of bravado and bribes to get what he wants; and woven in between are the brutalities; a group of SS men shoot a one-armed worker declaring him as useless, the Camp Commandment orders people killed when he feels like it or takes a rifle and randomly shoots a prisoner (with blood staining the snow dead), there is the sorting of items picked from Jews sent to the concentration camps (including jewellery, valuables, teeth with gold fillings, you get the idea), the horror of women being separated from their children. Schindler soon gets obsessed with the idea of saving his workers, and by the end of the war, he has managed to navigate the Nazi bureaucracy enough to save more than a 1,000 people.
This is a cold brutal movie that does not hesitate to show the darkest nature of what humans can turn into, but it also shows the essential humanity of a person from whom such actions were not expected. Schindler's List is a must-watch movie, even though it has been a long time since it was released.

Silence of the Lambs (1991)

You would have heard of the notion, 'Use a thief to catch a thief'; well, this incredible movie takes this notion to a much higher degree. Use the mind of a psychopathic killer to find another one and terminate a series of killings that are happening. The movie, 'Silence of the Lambs' was a terrifying thriller when it burst onto audiences in 1991. Rarely has a movie won 5 or more Oscars, and Silence of the Lambs is one of them. Never before has a scary / horror movie won the Best Picture Oscar, this movie won it. It picked up a total of 5 Academy Awards,
- Jonathan Demme won an Academy Award for Best Director.
- Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster both won Oscars for Best Actor and Actress respectively
- The film won additional Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture
In addition, the performance by Anthony Hopkins as the psychopath in the role of a helper playing a mental cat and mouse game with Jodie Foster was so electrifying that he got the Best Actor award for a role that was the shortest Oscar winning role with only 16 minutes of acting through the movie.



Silence of the Lambs was a tremendous financial success, earning more than $270 million worldwide on a budget of $19 million. But arguably the greatest effect it had was on establishing the reputation of Anthony Hopkins as a great actor. His performance was hailed as a spectacular one.
For all the chill and menace portrayed in the movie, the actual scenes of horror and terror were few, with scenes of actual violence few and far between. The menace was in the depiction, and in the scenes of discussion between Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster (4 interviews in all). The discussions between them are one of the highlights between them, with Anthony Hopkins being the expert mind manipulator, and Jodie Foster, the bright but inexperienced FBI rookie.
The movie is about a couple of psychopaths who are cannibals, one of them in jail, and the other outside. There are a number of young woman getting killed and then getting skinned in a gruesome way, and the FBI is desperately trying to find the killer (the more the killings, the more panic there will be in the whole region). The unknown cannibalistic killer has been styled as 'Buffalo Bill'. The only weapon that the FBI has ? It has another equally horrid killer, the former psychologist turned cannibal and serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter in custody (and what a custody ! They have to keep him in a jail with strict security arrangements so that he cannot escape).
The head of the FBI behavioral sciences unit, Crawford manipulates a young rookie, still learning, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to see Dr. Lecter so that he might be more pliant at seeing her and agree to cooperate. And so starts the game. She has been advised to not let Dr. Lecter get too close to her mind, but soon she gives up all those thoughts, lets him peer deep inside her thoughts and mind (and he seems to be amazingly perceptive). Thus we learn the origin of the name of the movie. When she was 10, her father (mother had died earlier) was killed on duty, and she was sent to live with some cold relatives on their ranch. She wakes up one day early, and can hear the sounds of young lambs screaming as they are led to their slaughter, and that sound goes deep into her. She tries to escape from there with one of the lambs, but is caught, and then exiled from the ranch. The sound of lambs screaming remains with her. In the end, when she manages to catch the killer, finally she hears silence, and hence the title.
Things escalate when a Senator's daughter in kidnapped; Dr. Lecter and Clarice talk and negotiate, although she is setup to fail, once with her boss Crawford letting her promise some terms to Dr. Lecter even though those are not to be carried through. Dr. Lecter lets out information about Buffalo Bill slowly, but eventually provides her correct information that lets her find Buffalo Bill (and what a confrontation, scary ! She is fighting an enemy who has night vision glasses in a house with lights turned off - this has to be seen for the chills to be experienced).
The one scene where Dr. Lecter escapes, and you get an idea of why the security on him was required, is incredible. He swats and kills 2 police officers, and you get an impression of the cannibalistic streak. The chill is when he calls her up later as she is being feted, and mentions that he is having a friend for dinner (the double meaning is very obvious); and then you see him eying the warden of his prison Chilton (who used to treat him badly) !!