THREE CREEPY CASSETTES : Grossing Out the VCR on Halloween Gasps, Gore and Ghouls

If you’re planning to celebrate Halloween by slapping some scary movies into your VCR, three that should really leave you gasping are John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of “The Thing,” Dan O’Bannon’s “Return of the Living Dead” (1984) and John Hough’s “The Legend of Hell House” (1973).

Few would argue that Christian Nyby’s “The Thing (From Another World)” (1951) is not a classic, ground-breaking work. But if you’re looking for a movie that will really assault your senses and tweak your imagination, pick up the Carpenter remake.

Based on John W. Campbell Jr.’s short story “Who Goes There?,” “The Thing” is a Kafkaesque saga of 10 men in an isolated Antarctic research station who are terrorized by an alien that can absorb and imitate any life form with which it comes in contact. One by one, the men fall prey to the viruslike alien, and a deadly guessing game ensues as the crew tries to figure out who is still human and who is actually an alien imitation.

Carpenter, who established himself as a master with “Halloween” in 1978, doesn’t really break any new ground thematically but does give us a scary, fast-paced and intelligent thriller. He coaxes strong, believable performances from his cast (which includes Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley and Richard Masur), and he heavily punctuates things with gut-wrenching but plausible special effects.

While “The Thing” succeeds by exploring serious themes of paranoia and isolation, “Return of the Living Dead” gives us horror with bloody tongue firmly in cheek. By alternating graphic scenes of violence with Three Stooges-style bumbling, O’Bannon’s zombie spoof is repelling and maniacally funny at the same time.

Clu Gulager and James Karen are Frank and Freddie, two bumbling warehousemen at a medical supply house who accidentally release an experimental Army nerve gas from some canisters. As it turns out, the gas has the ability to reanimate dead tissue, and after a few gruesome but really funny turns, the gas finds its way to a nearby graveyard where it transforms the moldering inhabitants into an army of brain-eating, walking dead.

In spite of a script with holes big enough to drive a hearse through, “Return of the Living Dead” is great satire with enough shocks and yuks to enchant seasoned horror fans as well as occasional dabblers in the genre. And a great soundtrack with tunes by the Cramps, 45 Grave and Orange County’s own TSOL keeps the action rocking along.

If you have a hard time with ultra-violence and gross-out special effects but still long for a good blood chiller, “The Legend of Hell House” is for you.

Based on a novel by Richard Matheson, “Hell House” gives us English character actor Clive Revill as the unflappable Dr. Barrett, a physicist who joins forces with psychics Florence (Pamela Franklin) and Ben (Roddy McDowall) to investigate ghostly phenomena at a dreary old mansion, said to be “the Mt. Everest of haunted houses.”

It doesn’t take long before weird things begin to happen, and as their frequency and intensity increase, so does the tension between Dr. Barrett and Florence: He attributes the spooky phenomena to random, directionless psychic energy, while she believes the house is haunted by the ghost of the abused son of the sadist who built it.

To prove his theory, Dr. Barrett trucks in a machine that will polarize the house’s atmosphere and dissipate its psychic energy. Meanwhile, the idealistic Florence tries to exorcise the ghost by offering up her virginal body as a love sacrifice that will send the spirit on its way. But for both of them, of course, the house has other ideas.

Visually, by today’s standards, “The Legend of Hell House” is pretty tame, but what it may lack in visual acuity is more than made up for in atmosphere and sheer creepiness.