Tag: classics
Typically ancillary early black roles pepper this horror classic. Black slaves bury Egyptian mummy dude Im-Ho-Tep (the distinctly non-Egyptian Boris Karloff) alive, then are speared to death so that they can’t reveal where he’s buried. Noble Johnson is “The Nubian,” the mummy’s obedient servant whose skull cap makes him...
Mighty Joe Young is basically "King Kong lite", from its tone (decidedly lighter) to the size of its gorilla (decidedly smaller) to the role of its black cast (decidedly less important). Like King Kong, the role of the black people in Mighty Joe Young is peripheral -- natives sharing...
This Charlie Chan outing (Battle of the racial stereotypes!) isn't really horror, but Mantan Moreland's role is limited -- even in light of the time period -- to being spooked at the mere prospect of there being ghosts...which there weren't. Too bad, because the gag gets old quickly, with...
An all-black horror comedy starring Mantan Moreland and sometimes partner (and straight man) F.E. Miller, Lucky Ghost is amusing low-brow fare that exploits the more base, stereotypical elements of old-time black life (chicken thievin', gamblin', runnin' from ghosteses) for laughs -- sort of like the BET of its day....
The prototypical "wilds of Africa" horror film (although Skull Island isn't supposed to be in Africa), King Kong features wild, black natives (led by chief Noble Johnson) jumping around and going "ooga booga," kidnapping white women, worshiping Kong and proceeding to get stepped on by the monster from aforementioned...
One of the more high-minded zombie films you'll find, I Walked with a Zombie is as much (melo)drama as it is horror. There's not a hint of the humor that was to propel the spoof Zombies on Broadway two years later, nor the explicit brain-munching that was to propel,...
Blacula has become synonymous with black horror -- and rightly so -- but beyond being a seminal film that kickstarted the modern concept of black horror, it was also one of the earliest and most successful movies in the influential "Blaxploitation" era of cinema, propelling a movement that satiated...
Haunted Spooks is perhaps best known as the film that almost cost daredevil silent-film comedy legend Harold Lloyd his life -- a not-so-proppish bomb exploded in his hand, costing him a couple of fingers -- but it's also one of the earliest movies to feature the ol' "spook" stereotype...
Ganja & Hess is an acquired taste (pun intended), but for those who acquire it, it's a vivid, stylish, introspective trip. It's also utterly weird and confusing in that art-house, experimental '60s/'70s sort of way. The story revolves around Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones of Night of the Living...
Like Carrie four decades later, Freaks is one big -- or rather, small, given the size of the characters and its 60-minute length -- revenge flick that portrays the mistreatment of social outcasts for 90% of the film, only to have them rise up and tear the mutha down...
