The best horror films have the right atmosphere and location. A place of isolation, where characters are trapped, without hope of help from the ‘real’ world. For many films, the best place is a spooky old building, preferably miles from anywhere and surrounded by graveyards, swamps, woods, or crashing ocean waves.
Here are ten fantastic settings in classic horror films:
The Uninvited
Start with the Windward House in The Uninvited (1944), where the night brings phantom sobbing and misty presences on the old staircase. The ocean casts strange shadows through the windows, but is that why the atmosphere in the studio is so oppressive? And just what (or who) causes the family dog to run away and the cat to refuse to go upstairs? And why would a house have it in for the last member of the Meredith family?
The Pit and the Pendulum
Journey from house to castle, this owned by the cursed Medina family in The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and also perched next to the sea. Here the harpsichord plays at midnight in a dead woman’s hand, a torture chamber stained with the blood of a thousand wretched souls prays on the mind of the inhabitants, and voices call from the shadows behind the walls. What better place for a horror revel?
The Wolf Man
Of course, there’s always Talbot Hall from The Wolf Man (1941). Already having lost one Talbot, the ancient manor becomes home to a second cursed member when the younger brother, Larry, is bitten by a werewolf. And there are plenty of fog-shrouded woods and graveyards for his nocturnal side to prowl in the dark. No need to bring a party soundtrack, the place is already generous with howls and screams.
I Walked With a Zombie
Although sometimes silence is better. For example, the still corridors of the Holland Plantation in I Walked With a Zombie (1943), disturbed only by the soft rustle of zombie footsteps and the far-away drums of the mill and houmfort. And to visit the place of vodou, a spookily marked trail through the sugarcane leads the way, as long as the whistling wind and Carrefour don’t scare everyone away.
The Ghost Breakers
As an alternative, don’t forget to try death by laughter. For that, the Castillo Maldito will do, perched on a lonely island off the Cuban Coast and containing a zombie, ghosts, organs that play by themselves, and a history to make anyone nauseous. But in The Ghost Breakers (1940), there’s also room for levity, a nice break in the midst of a creepy night.
Doctor X
But don’t forget what horror films are really all about— scares. And what’s scarier than a bizarre house/laboratory facility in the middle of who-knows-where that’s hosting a group of professors for a ghoulish experiment to determine which one of them is the ‘Moon Killer,’ who stalks the moonlit streets, killing and cannibalizing victims? This wonderful building in Doctor X (1932) comes complete with long, poorly lit hallways, a large closet of human skeletons, and a machine that measures how ‘excited’ the professors become watching recreations of gruesome murders.
Night of the Demon
And speaking of gruesome murders, just what happens to people who visit Dr. Julian Karswell’s sinister estate in Night of the Demon (1957). Are they swept away by a mysterious windstorm, like the one that tears through the lovely grounds in the middle of a children’s party? Are they torn apart by whatever lives in the library? Or are they caught by the strange presence that follows people who wander into the woods around the house in the dark of night?
Phantom of the Opera
Darkness also rules the bowels of the Paris opera house in Phantom of the Opera (1925, 1943), along with the notorious Phantom himself. All manner of spooky and downright deadly acts can be laid at his doorstep, and that’s before he drops a chandelier on the audience.
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Of course, not all settings are man-made. The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) chose a nice, peaceful backwater of the Amazon for his home. The underwater abode features a lot of lovely rock formations, some drifting plantlife and a lot of dark pools for an ancient humanoid amphibian to lurk in.
Poltergeist
But perhaps the more terrifying place for spooks to lurk is in one’s own home. And thus, Poltergeist (1982) might have the best setting of all- the ordinary home of an ordinary family. No random suburban tract house should possess such demonic presences and cause such terrors. Of course, most of them are not built on occupied graveyards, either. Gives a new meaning to the idea of double occupancy.
These are but a taste of what a true night of horror films can offer a viewer. After all, every horror story needs a place to call home, and the best of them have a unique setting with all the right features for ghoulish delight.