There are many words that can be used to describe horror films: gory, creepy, chilling, disturbing. One word you don't often use to describe horror films is elegant, but that is precisely how I would describe THE HAUNTING, Robert Wise's 1963 classic of high-brow horror. Remade in 1999 by Jan De Bont, a talented director of action films like SPEED, into a clunky effects-heavy bore, the original remains a unique horror film; equally beautiful and unsettling.

Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson) is interested in psychic and supernatural phenomenon. With his crisp suits and British accents, he's sort of a Ghostbuster with better academic credentials. A notoriously haunted place named Hill House has come to his attention, and he receives permission to stay in the house and determine the nature of its ghostly activity.

Hill House, designed by Elliot Scott is one of the great Hollywood sets: long, maze-like hallways and cavernous ornate rooms. In the library there is a spiral staircase that rises to the ceiling and spawns a truly remarkable shot; as Dr. Markway recounts Hill House's sordid history he shares the story of one of its caretakers, who took her own life by hanging herself off the very top of the staircase. Wise then cuts to shot of the camera gliding down the stairs and the repeating revolutions of the staircase create the impression of falling deep into an endless abyss.

Markway receives support from three people he treats more like lab rats than colleagues. Impetuous Luke (Russ Tamblyn) is the skeptical heir who stands to inherit Hill House when his aging grandmother dies. Mysterious Theo (Claire Bloom) has untapped telepathic powers. And finally Nell (Julie Harris) is a psychologically scarred woman whose incessant self-doubting interior monologue fills much of THE HAUNTING's soundtrack.

Horror typically means monsters and blood. In these cases, the scares come from the terrifying appearance of the creatures or their mutilated victims. There is rarely an element of doubt or surprise though, by design, there is a great deal of shock built in to the moments where the carnage is glimpsed onscreen. The dread of waiting for the inevitable is part of this formula's emotional impact.

But THE HAUNTING separates itself from this tradition by adding a crucial element: mystery. Without spoiling too much, Wise doggedly refuses to reveal throughout the film the precise nature of Hill House's haunting. There is no origin point or motivation (as there is with a monster like Jason or Freddy Krueger, who kill for a reason). And Nell's interior monologue and slow deterioration into madness casts further doubt. What one person calls a ghost another could call mental illness.

THE HAUNTING's black and white photography seems another key factor in its success. Black and white is baroque and ominous, and inherently removed from reality. In THE HAUNTING the photography adds an unsettling, unnatural element to its impact on the viewer. Why aren't more horror films in black and white? Of course, the answer is modern directors love to film blood in color. They never seem to remember that the most effective use of cinematic blood was in PSYCHO, where it was portrayed in black and white by a large quantity of chocolate syrup.

Will THE HAUNTING scare you? No, not in the way a film like A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET might. There is no blood or gore, or elaborate creature effects. But I suspect when it is over you won't feel quite right. There are all kinds of scary movies beyond those we typically get. THE HAUNTING is another kind. An elegant kind.

IF YOU LIKED THE HAUNTING, CHECK OUT: VISIONS OF LIGHT (1992), an engrossing documentary about the history of cinematography. The clips are great gateway to seeing more great old movies.

THE BAD

THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE is to movies what compound fractures are to the human body. It is a stain on the entire concept of movies; if it had been released in a stricter society than ours, all film production would have surely been banned for fear of its potential negative effect on the populace.

The Garbage Pail Kids was a set of trading cards created in the mid-1980s by Art Spiegelman, the same man who would later legitimize the graphic novel for the mainstream with his MAUS books. Trading Garbage Pail Kids with a neighbor is one of my earliest childhood memories. The appeal of the Garbage Pail Kids lay mostly in the trading; not particularly in the silly names and pictures, but in the idea of collecting that continues to dominate children's culture. Thus, the Kids were ill-suited to a feature length movie to begin with, and the execution only got worse from there. Gruesome and gross in trading card form, they are downright repugnant onscreen, and, embodied by midgets sporting bulky costumes with little mobility, they wobble around like broken wind-up toys.

THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE, filmed with the visual flair of a tree stump, was made by nobodies and for designed for no one. Pinpointing an audience that is appropriate for it seems impossible; the cards were designed for young children, and those characters brought to life on the screen (Ali Gator, Greaser Greg, among others) provide ample fart, pee, and puke humor. But the material is also far too mature for children, and the lessons it provides often disturbingly unhealthy. THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS promotes, amongst other things, child labor, gambling, threatening others with knives, selling out to corporations, alcohol usage and children undressing in front of peers and adults. In perhaps the most mind-boggling sequence the Kids sing a song about teamwork (Sample line: "We can do anything by working with each other!") and then promptly put their teamwork to use by going on a massive crime spree, stealing whatever they like. Way to send a positive message to children! Why stop at breaking and entering and larceny, why not show the kids cooking crack cocaine?

In case you are wondering — and if you are may I suggest that you are eating too much broken glass — the origin of the Garbage Pail Kids is left unexplained. There are some overtures toward the notion that they are extra-terrestrial; the credits roll over an image of the Earth from space as a garbage can shaped space ship flies past, but that is as far as that idea is taken. In the film they are contained, naturally, in a garbage pail, located in the antique shop of one Captain Manzini (Anthony Newley), who will not tell his young assistant Dodger (MacKenzie Astin) where he acquired it, only to say that it, like Pandora's Box, should never be open. "It," he says, "is Pandora's Pail." This movie, I say, is Pandora's Video. Its case should never be opened.

Dodger (coincidentally, a 14-year-old who looks more like 11) has no home, no parents, and does not attend school. He spends all day working in Captain Manzini's shop, even though there are never any customers and there is nothing to do. Eventually, the Kids are released from their pail (no explanation how seven oversized tykes managed to fit in one garbage can either) and refuse to return to it. They like Dodger so they sew cool clothes he can use to impress Tangerine (Katie Barberi) the teenage fashion designer he likes. Later, they change their mind, and will only work if Dodger helps them release their friends from "The State Home For The Ugly" (where, it turns out, Santa Claus is locked up too for some reason). What do you think Art Spiegelman thought of the fact that his clever, anarchic creatures were turned into jaded, vindictive tailors?

The opening titles credit the film as "A Topps Chewing Gum Production" and the finished product suggests the executives at Topps looked at THE GARBAGE PAILS KIDS MOVIE as if it were a stick of gum: ready-made to blow.

INSTEAD OF THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE, CHECK OUT: THE INCREDIBLES (2004), outstanding Pixar entertainment for children and adults (who remember what it was like to be children).

THE UGLY

On the list of ways I'd like to go, death by overly vigorous intercourse with a mutated bee girl would be very high; top three at least, just behind dying in my sleep and choking to death on my own foot. The Bee Girls all dress in revealing outfits and wear clunky sunglasses to mask their black bee eyes. Call me crazy, but they look sexy as hell. You can see why all the dopey men in town are falling under their spell. Death seems like a reasonable price for a shot with one of them.

Their illogical plan involves killing men through gymnastic getting-it-on sessions, then turning their widows into Bee Girls, in a process that involves, to my untrained eye, covering the nude women in marshmallow fluff, sticking them in front of a crotch-level dartboard, nuking them in a microwave for a few minutes and then peeling off the now rubbery fluff to reveal the newly-formed Bee Girl underneath. These Bee Girls then go out and kill more men, which creates the opportunity to make more Bee Girls. To be honest, I missed the explanation of the plan's origins and its intended purpose. Something about a Dr. Grubowsky, a bactereologist; or, in layman's terms, a man who studies bacters. I do know that it all involves the Brandt Corporation, a scientific firm employed by the military, and experiments on bees, which serves as a good reminder that animal testing is cruel and immoral especially when it is on animals with the ability to turn human beings into remorseless sex-crazed killers with no eyeballs.

Mankind's only hope against the nebulous Bee Girl menace is Neil Agar, State Department Security. I know his name and title because Neil Agar (State Department Security) announces his full name and title in every single scene: when he meets people, when he calls people on the phone, when he reports in to headquarters, when he orders his dinner at the Olive Garden, when he picks up his dry cleaning, and so on. Neil Agar, State Department Security, has been called in by the State Department (by someone in the security division, no doubt) to investigate the mysterious but sexy murders at the Brandt Corporation.

Neil's not too bright. In one scene he is oblivious to the attempted rape of his girlfriend because he is busy using a pay phone. Later, he cracks the secret of the Bee Girls by using an incredible leap of logic. After someone remarks that the men are "dropping like flies" he realizes the killers must be some sort of insect! That is so stupid, it's almost brilliant.

Dim-witted Neil could use some help, but his only assistance comes from a chubby, balding police chief with powers of deduction that make Chief Wiggim look like Encyclopedia Brown. He holds a town meeting to tell the surviving citizens not to have sex for fear that it could kill them. Most of the townspeople are outraged and declare they will have sex early and often with whomever they choose, and most of those people die quickly at the hands of the voluptuous Bee Girls inside of ten minutes. There was one guy in the corner who looked relieved, as if he finally had an excuse for his self-imposed abstinence. INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS is silly to be sure, but it is performed by its mediocre cast with a heartfelt sincerity that borders on touching. Its premise is ludicrous -- and that's in the scenes where it's lucid at all -- but you wouldn't know it from the performances which never wink or acknowledge the inherent idiocy in a massive sex conspiracy from the animal kingdom. This, along with a surprising and very much welcome nudity quotient, make it a treat.

IF YOU LIKED INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS, CHECK OUT: GUN CRAZY (1949), with Peggy Cummins as the ultimate trick-shooting femme fatale. Sleeping with her doesn’t physically kill you, but it might as well, since she uses her feminine wiles to convince her lover to go from carnival performer to bank robber to murderer. Not exactly a feminist tract, but a supremely cynical noir.