It's easy to think of black and white horror movies as hokey affairs with plastic skeletons and visible wires in every frame, but there are many black and white features that are truly terrifying. Dismissing monochrome movies as an anachronistic relic does an injustice to the tales told in them and the impact the stark color palette has on the story and atmosphere.
Black and white horror can be found in every subgenre and time period - they aren't restricted to the 30s and 40s. From nightmarish, psychedelic period pieces, to vampire westerns and Japanese body horror, black and white horror has a lot to offer. For those looking to investigate the genre more, these underappreciated monochrome monstrosities that will keep viewers up at night.
The Addiction
Abel Ferrara's 1995 vampire allegory for drug addiction stars Lili Taylor and Christopher Walken. The bleak horror/thriller follows student Kathleen (Taylor) who after being attacked and bitten by a mysterious woman called Casanova starts developing vampiric tendencies. Kathleen is soon attacking people to fulfill her urges. As her story unfolds she meets another vampire called Peina (Walken) who claims to have almost completely overcome his addiction to drinking blood and offers to help her through hers. Ultimately his efforts are wasted when Kathleen continues to feed and only escalates in her brutality.
A philosophical approach to the horror of addiction, The Addiction is a disturbing and grisly look at how addiction grabs hold of a person, warps their whole viewpoint, and the impact it has on people around the addict. It's not subtle in its approach and Ferrara has stated that it wasn't meant to be.
Darling
Darling tells the story of a woman named Darling (Lauren Ashley Carter) who has recently become the caretaker of Madame's old New York home. Madame warns her that the previous caretaker flung themselves off of the balcony and warns her away from the locked door at the end of the hall. The film is told in 6 chapters and follows Darling's descent into madness as suspicions of the supernatural leak into her life, and she begins to experience frightening hallucinations.
The classic influences on Darling are easy to see, there are echoes of Polanski throughout in the visual and narrative style. Darling was shot over only 12 days and achieves an incredibly effective descent into madness without answering a lot of questions as it goes. Darling is one that needs to be seen without knowing much beyond the basic premise.
A Field In England
Set in the 17th century during the English Civil War, A Field In England is a hallucinatory trip through the journey of an alchemist's assistant, 2 deserters, and a wizard as they search for treasure in a field. Reece Shearsmith is Whitehead, an escaped alchemist's assistant, soldier Cutler (Ryan Pope), and Jacob and Friend (Peter Ferdinando and Richard Grover) who find themselves in a field and dine upon a meal of wild mushrooms that are growing in a ring around the area. From there, things go downhill for the group as the Wizard O'Neill (Michael Smiley) is literally unearthed and begins imposing himself on the men.
There is magic, torture, and murder in what follows as the men succumb to hallucinations and anger towards each other. Filled with dread A Field In England is an uncomfortable and confusing trip where the true value of friendship is discovered and promptly discarded.
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Ana Lily Amirpour's Iranian vampire-western stars Sheila Vand as The Girl and Arash Marandi as Arash who become entangled in each other's lives one night in the town of 'Bad City'. Arash is dealing with his heroin-addicted father Hossein who has brought brutal debt collectors to their door. A chance encounter with a woman in a chador draws him into a world of vampires, love, and questions of morality as The Girl wanders the streets of Bad City making victims of those who are wrongdoers in her eyes.
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night subverts expectations, making the lone woman the danger instead of the victim in the narrative. With aesthetics that draw inspiration from old-style spaghetti westerns, the film is a slow hypnotic tale with a dreamy atmosphere that is hard to look away from.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
Tetsuo: The Iron Man is not a movie for the faint of heart. It features extreme body horror and has become infamous for the imagery displayed within it. In the beginning, a metal fetishist is hit by a car and dies after seeing a self-inflicted wound on his thigh has festered. After this, the audience meets The Salaryman, the true protagonist of the film who has become tormented by visions of metal and mutilation. As the story progresses The Salaryman begins to transform into metal himself, piece by piece as carnage and metal monstrosities follow and attack him.
Tetsuo is both a body horror and a supernatural movie that uses its black and white gradient to hide any imperfections in effects and to make the transformations seem all the more real. It is a grotesque and harrowing 67-minute exploration of fetishes, revenge, and industrialization.