We left off at the end of part 1 discussing major movements in the horror genre during the '50s and '60s. Several great auteurs made forays into the horror genre during this period. While Michael Powell's portrayal of a serial killer in Peeping Tom (1960) Peeping Tom: The Criterion Collection basically ended his career, Hitchcock's treatment of the same topic in the same year, Psycho Psycho (50th Anniversary Edition) [Blu-ray], was a smash success; along with his later film The Birds (1963) The Birds (Collector's Edition), it forced critics to take horror film seriously and contributed to the decline of strict American film censorship. Other A-list horror films of the period well-worth watching today are the ghost films The Innocents (1961) The Innocents, The Haunting (1963) The Haunting; and two films featuring iconic performances by Robert Mitchum, The Night of the Hunter (1955) The Night of the Hunter: The Criterion Collection and Cape Fear (1962) Cape Fear. Roman Polanski directed three masterful horror films focused on paranoia and psychological deterioration: Repulsion (1965) Repulsion: The Criterion Collection, Rosemary's Baby (1968) Rosemary's Baby, and The Tenant (1976) The Tenant.
Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) Jaws (30th Anniversary Edition), following his similarly excellent horror film debut Duel (1971) Duel (Collector's Edition), gave birth to the "summer blockbuster" and the "high-concept movie," and had a deep impact on the film industry as a whole. The success of such films may have influenced studios' decisions to fund fairly unusual horror productions (as opposed to dramas or straight action films) which have since been recognized as classics: Deliverance (1972) Deliverance (Deluxe Edition), a dark tale featuring rural degenerates which was nominated for Best Picture; The Wicker Man (1973) The Wicker Man (Two-Disc Special Edition), a British film which mixes musical and mystery elements with horrific themes; The Stepford Wives (1975) The Stepford Wives, a feminist dystopia; and Ridley Scott's sci-fi landmark Alien (1979) Alien (The Director's Cut), whose novel combination of realistic science-fiction, horror, dystopian, and action elements inspired most of the science fiction of the next several decades, including its own sequel Aliens (1986) Aliens (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) and The Terminator (1984) The Terminator.
