Rotten Tomatoes is celebrating Halloween with 31 days of horror double feature recommendations. Each day of the week will have its own theme, with today’s being Throwback Thursday! And if you want see what’s in store or what you missed, see the Daily Double schedule.
For Throwback Thursdays, we pair up movies released before the 1970s, before The Exorcist or Jaws made horror blockbuster business. The two films for today put you in women’s shoes, as the heroines wander through the streets of America and into personal hell.
Another movie from a one-and-done director: Herk Harvey who, between making hundreds of instructional and educational videos in Kansas, managed to put together this disquieting feature. It begins with a drag race gone deadly, as passenger Mary emerges from the river where her friend’s car has sunk. She moves on to the Salt Lake area, attempting to hold down a job or some human companionship, but is dogged constantly by creepy organ music in her head, becoming invisible and mute in public, and random appearances by pasty ghouls and their disheveled leader (played by Harvey himself). Chock full of dread and, like Dementia, another keen look at imperiled women trapped in nightmarish unreality. Watch this and you can see where George A. Romero picked up how to pressurize unease for Night of the Living Dead.
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