Beneath the Skin

Cecelia Condit

1981, 12:05 min, color, sound

Horror and humor merge in Condit's incredulous, wide-eyed narration of a bizarre and lurid tale, which unfolds as a subterranean nightmare of male/female relationships. Condit's account of her discovery that her boyfriend had killed his former girlfriend and hidden the mummified body in their...

Coffin from Toothpicks

Cynthia Maughan

1975, 1:54 min, b&w, sound

Frozen & Buried Alive

Cynthia Maughan

1974-1975, 1:30 min, b&w, sound

Monster Voice

Cynthia Maughan

1975, 1:52 min, b&w, sound

Secret Horror

Michael Smith

1980, 13:38 min, color, sound

Another regular evening at Mike's house turns into a comic nightmare. Finding himself a stranger in his own apartment, a "world totally fashioned from the effluvia of TV and pop music," Mike is plagued by a mysterious drop ceiling, his dry cleaning, and a host of ghostly visitors. This postmodern...

Sucker

Tony Oursler

1987, 5:33 min, color, sound

Blood and transcendence are themes that permeate Sucker, with its incarnations of religious iconography and sexuality. Life and death, good and evil are evoked as the incantatory voiceovers and sordid images make reference to communion, transfusions, bloodbaths, bloodlust, vampires and the...

The Creeping Crimson

George Kuchar

1987, 12:50 min, color, sound

Writes Kuchar: "It is fall and Halloween and mom is in the hospital. The leaves are red and the mood is blue but life drips on, pizza is devoured and the mall must be frequented. A stroll among the foliage reveals bitter fruit yet sweetness lies just around the corner where the Bronx meets...

The Scary Movie

Peggy Ahwesh 

1993, 8:16 min, b&w, sound, 16 mm film on video

Ahwesh's two young actresses, Martina and Sonja, cross-dress in vampire capes and werewolf claws, re-enacting familiar horror tropes. A roughly corresponding soundtrack of stock screams and "scary" music suggests that the girls' toying with gender roles and power dynamics may have dire consequences.

Untitled (Silver)

Takeshi Murata

2006, 11 min, b&w, sound

Takeshi Murata employs precise digital processing to create astonishing hallucinatory visions. In Untitled (Silver), Murata subjects a snippet of footage from a vintage horror film (Mario Bava's 1960 Mask of Satan, featuring Barbara Steele) — to his exacting yet almost violent digital manipulations. The seething back and white imagery constantly decomposes and reconstitutes itself, slipping seductively between abstraction and recognition.