The Amazing Transparent Man (1960)
Invisible Man
Edgar G. Ulmer gained a small cult reputation as a director. Here he makes a very cheap invisible man film, one that spends more of its time as a 1940s crime melodrama
Films of 1960
Atom Age Vampire (1960)
Facially Disfigured Woman/Mad Killer Scientist
Despite the possibilities set up by the title, this features no vampires nor atomic monsters but is an Italian film influenced by Eyes Without a Face about a mad surgeon trying to restore a woman’s disfigured face
Beyond the Time Barrier (1960)
Time Travel to Post-Holocaust Future
B budget film from Edgar G. Ulmer that was made quickly to exploit the success of George Pal’s The Time Machine concerning an Air Force pilot who is thrown through time into a mutant ruled future
Black Sunday (1960)
Italian Gothic/Revived Witch's Revenge
Classic work that defined the Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s and turned Barbara Steele into a cult actress. Mario Bava shoots vivid, incredibly atmospheric scenes in black-and-white in ways that no other director does
Blood and Roses (1960)
Lesbian Vampire/Carmilla Adaptation
Roger Vadim conducts a very sofctore adaptation the classic vampire story Carmilla but this seems pallid and bloodless in contrast to the Hammer Films of the same period, not to mention their later adaptations of the same story
The Brides of Dracula (1960)
Hammer Dracula Sequel
The second of Hammer’s Dracula films has to work around the absence of Christopher Lee. Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing is brought to the forefront and Terence Fisher provides some standout directorial sequences
The Bulldog Breed (1960)
Idiot in the Navy/Rocket Launch
In the 1960s, a number of popular comics made films about the Space Race. This was a vehicle for Norman Wisdom, a minor British comic of the era, and has him enrolled in the Navy and launched into orbit
The Cape Canaveral Monsters (1960)
Alien Invaders Sabotage the Space Mission
The one other SF film made by Phil Tucker, the director of Robot Monster. An alien invader effort made to capitalise on the Space Race with aliens trying to sabotage rocket launches
Cinderfella (1960)
Sex-Reversed Cinderella Comedy
The popular fairytale has the sexes reversed and is reworked as a comedy vehicle for Jerry Lewis, although the upshot of this is that we get a Cinderella who is now a near-imbecilic Beverly Hills stepchild
Circus of Horrors (1960)
Psycho Surgeon-Circus Master
Fascinatingly sordid film from the early days of the English horror cycle in which Anton Diffring is a mad surgeon obsessed with facial disfiguration hiding as a circus master and arranging a series of circus-themed deaths for his failed experiments
The Devil’s Eye (1960)
The Devil Tempts Innocents Comedy
Ingmar Bergman comedy in which The Devil sends Don Juan to tempt a vicar’s wife. A minor Bergman entry where he seems unsuited to directing comedy and allows his usual weighty philosophical preoccupations to intrude
Dinosaurus! (1960)
Revived Dinosaurs and Caveman
A low-budget effort but amiable effort about dinosaurs and a caveman that are revived on an island. The cheap effects, culminating in a battle between a dinosaur and a crane, have some imagination
The Electronic Monster (1960)
Sinister Dream-Programming Institute
The very first dreamscape film, prefiguring many other films that have taken up the theme, most notably Inception. By contrast this is a dull affair that lets most of the possibilities slip through its hands.
The Ghost Cat of Otama Pond (1960)
Japanese Ghost Story
Another effort from the Golden Age of kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story films) during the 1950s-60s. While this assembles the essentials of the genre, it is only delivered in terms of a series of strident and unsubtle pop-up effects
The Hands of Orlac (1960)
Possessed Hands
The third film and least version of the classic horror story about a pianist who receives hands transplanted from a murderer and is driven mad believing they are possessing him
The House of Usher (1960)
Edgar Allan Poe Adaptation
The first and best of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adapations with Vincent Price. Corman was piggybacking on the Gothic revival sparked by Hammer Films and creates a superbly brooding work that is the best adaptation of the story yet
The Human Vapor (1960)
Gaseous Supervillain
Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda makes a film about a meek man who gains the ability to transform into a mist and promptly becomes a bank-robbing super-villain
The Hypnotic Eye (1960)
Hypnotism Disfigurements
Fascinatingly lurid B movie clearly influenced by Horrors of the Black Museum about women being hypnotised to mutilate themselves. This achieves a rather compulsive atmosphere
The Incredible Petrified World (1960)
Lost World Adventure
Jerry Warren;’ films rank alongside Edward D. Wood Jr in their cheapness, complete lack of directorial style and agonising dullness. This is a lost world adventure that mostly consists of people sitting around in a cave
Jigoku (1960)
Journey to Hell
A fascinating Japanese film where a man has to descend into Hell, designed along the lines of Dante’s Inferno, to save the soul of his loved one. The depiction of Hell is filled with luridly surreal scenes
The Leech Woman (1960)
Rejuvenation Serum
Disappointingly not a work about human-animal hybrids but about a woman who obtains a rejuvenation serum but finds it requires devouring male pineal glands. This comes with much amusingly dated sexism
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Killer Plant Black Comedy
The original, Roger Corman’s zero budget film about a killer plant is an hilarious black comedy that has become a cult favourite and remains his most well remembered film
Macario (1960)
Death Gifts a Peasant Healing Water
Mexican film made to celebrate the Day of the Dead wherein Death befriends a poor peasant and bequeaths him a gift of a gourd of healing water. While not terribly sophisticated, this works as a pure and simple fable
Mill of the Stone Women (1960)
Continental Gothic
One of the films from the Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s, Released fairly soon into the cycle when the tropes were not set in place, it draws strong influence from Hammer Films and goes off at a strange tangent that is one part House of Wax, another part resurrection experiments
Night of the Ghouls (1960/1983)
Fake Medium
A once lost Edward D. Wood Jr film with police investigating a fake medium scam being run out of a haunted house
Peeping Tom (1960)
Psycho Film
Classic psycho film that came out the same year as Psycho but was killed in release being seen as morally repugnant. From the great Michael Powell, this features a killer obsessed with filming women as he kills them and finds an uncomfortable brilliance in the way it blurs a director’s obsessions and a viewer’s complicity in what they see on screen
Psycho (1960)
Psycho-Thriller
One of the defining classics of the genre, enormously influential, muchly imitated and parodied and possibly the most over-analysed film ever. Alfred Hitchcock expertly creates a creepy psycho-thriller in which he delights in lulling us and undermining expectation
Secret of the Telegian (1960)
Teleporting Super-Villain
Toho Films of the 1960s are best known for the Godzilla films and assorted monster bashes. This is one of their non-monster films, part of a spate of mutant supervillain films concerning a villain who has invented a teleportation machine and is using it to exact revenge
Tarzan the Magnificent (1960)
Jungle Hero
The second Tarzan film from producer Sy Weintraub who threw out the custie elements of the Johnny Weissmuller films, while going to Africa to shoot rather than a studio backlot. The effort makes a satisfying difference
The Tell-Tale Heart (1960)
Edgar Allan Poe Adaptation
Adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story about a guilty murderer haunted by the beating of the victim’s heart. A not uninteresting effort written by Brian Clemens, the creator of tv’s The Avengers that aims for dark psychological mood
The Testament of Orpheus (1960)
French Existentialism/Meta-Fictional Autobiography
Jean Cocteau’s follow-up to his earlier Orpheus becomes an opportunity where Cocteau makes an autobiographical films, revisiting his own life and works
13 Ghosts (1960)
Haunted House
One of the films from gimmick master William Castle, a more routine ghost story that eventually opts for a mundane ending and was sold with the gimmick of Ghost Viewer glasses. Later remade as Thir13en Ghosts
The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960)
Criminal Mastermind
The third film about the title criminal mastermind from Fritz Lang. Here Lang returns to a radically different Germany to the one he fled in the 1930s, the West Germany of the Cold War, to deliver a creepily paranoid work about the surveillance society
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
Big and Small Adventures
Adaptation of the Jonathan Swift classic about adventures in the lands of big and small people with stop-motion creature effects by Ray Harryhausen
The Time Machine (1960)
Time Travel/H.G. Wells Adaptation
This adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel was one of the best films from 1950s SF producer/director George Pal. The time travel is depicted with considerable wondrousness and standout effects for the era
Tormented (1960)
Haunting
Bert I. Gordon, a director known for his cheapo 1950s giant bug film, here ventures into the ghost story but delivers it in terms crude and absurdly heavy-handed pop-up effects
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)
Hammer Dr Jekyll Adaptation
Hammer Films had great success with their revivals of Dracula and Frankenstein and went on to adapt other classic horror stories. Here they take on the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story as a scientist unleashes his evil personality within
Vampire Bride (1960)
Vengeful Creature/Japanese Horror
Rather drab and cheap Japanese horror film about a disfigured actress who returns to life as a hairy vampire creature to exact vengeance. Not without its schlocky appeals, the hairy vampire bride looks more funny than threatening
Village of the Damned (1960)
Telepathic Alien Children
Classic adaptation of the John Wyndham novel about the women in a sleepy English village being impregnated and producing emotionless alien children with vast psychic powers. This translates the paranoia of US alien invasion films with considerable effectiveness
Visit to a Small Planet (1960)
Alien Visitor Comedy
A satirical Gore Vidal play is bent out of shape to become a vehicle for the slapstick nonsense of Jerry Lewis, cast as an alien visitor. Lewis is a love him or hate him actor; depending on one’s tolerance for such, this has much fast-paced silliness
The Wizard of Baghdad (1960)
Arabian Nights Comedy
A majorly unfunny variant on the Arabian Nights comedy featuring Dick Shawn as a demoted genie. The Thief of Bagdad as shabby flying carpet burlesque